


Sent to Drain

by lemonicee



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Andrew is a gay disaster, Blowjobs, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Demons, Even if Neil doesn't know what that is, Hellmouth, High School AU, Inspired by Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), M/M, Matt Boyd is Ride or Die, Neil Josten Is an Idiot, Neil and Matt have a bromance, Neil's life is the worst, Riko is the most pretentious vampire, Sexy Biting, Shower Sex, Slayer!Neil, Torture, Vampire Slayer(s), Vampires, gay panic but make it goth, handjobs, twinyards, vampire!Andrew
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:07:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 48,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24431827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonicee/pseuds/lemonicee
Summary: The monsters are vampires.  Neil is a reluctant vampire slayer. I’m sure you can see where this is going.Oh, and Columbia is a literal portal to hell.Wymack drops his clipboard on his desk and sits on the edge of it, nearly overturning a huge coffee mug that’s printed withTears of my Athletes. “You’re a vampire slayer.”“I’m sorry,” Neil says, because he must have heard wrong. “What the fuck?”And then, a beat later, “What’s a Hellmouth?”
Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 190
Kudos: 551
Collections: Avea's Fav Fanfics





	1. Welcome to the Hellmouth

**Author's Note:**

> The Watchers Council and the Hellmouth come from Buffy! This was originally a Buffy AU, but it took on a mind of its own after the first few chapters.

Neil Josten looks at himself in the dingy bathroom mirror at Columbia High School. It’s the first day of his senior year and he’s on his own for the first time in his life. His newly-dyed dark brown hair is falling across his forehead and the matching contacts in his eyes are unremarkable. Unnoticeable. Exactly the way he likes it.

Satisfied that no one will recognize him, Neil tugs his jacket closer around his shoulders and heads out to find his first period class. Not that there’s any reason anyone at this school _should_ recognize him, but Neil learned a long time ago that _should_ and _shouldn’t_ don’t really mean anything. 

His first class is AP European History, and he’s bored by it before he even gets the one-page syllabus. The guy sitting beside him is so tall he has to hunch over to whisper where Neil can hear him, “This class is going to suck.”

“Yeah,” Neil mutters back. He’s already taken a version of this class, or at least half a semester of it, at another school. The dude’s right, it sucked. 

“I’m Matt,” The guy says. “You new?”

“Neil.” Neil turns to look at Matt, trying to decide if he knows something. If he’s asking questions with an ulterior motive. No, he decides, taking in Matt’s friendly expression. Just being nice.

So he says, “Um, yeah. Just moved here.”

“Badass.” Matt looks stoked, like meeting a stranger before 9 AM was on his to-do list for the day and now he gets to check it off. “Where from?”

Before Neil can try out one of his practiced lies, the teacher says “Mr. Boyd, would you like to share with the rest of the class?”

“This is Neil,” Matt says, oblivious to Neil’s horror. “He’s new.”

“Welcome.” The teacher nods once at Neil, then holds up the syllabus again. “As I was saying…”

Neil tunes her out in favor of doodling in the corner of his new notebook until the bell rings. Before he can make it to the door, Matt is standing at his shoulder. “Eat lunch with me and my friends,” he says. “I promise they’re mostly nice.”

“Sure,” Neil replies. Because what else is he supposed to say? Fitting in means talking to people, whether he wants to or not. 

He makes it through English and Physics, and then he’s standing in the cafeteria line. He’d managed to fill out and turn in the free lunch form when he registered for school last week, so he just types in his student ID number at the end of the line and takes his tray out into the cafeteria. 

It’s overwhelming, like most school lunch rooms are. There are students everywhere, talking and yelling over each other. He’s about to fuck it all off and eat lunch in the bathroom when he hears his name being called. Matt is standing on a chair halfway across the cafeteria, waving both hands over his head. Neil waves back and makes his way semi-reluctantly across the cafeteria. 

When he gets there, Matt is sitting at a table with three girls and another guy. Neil slides into the empty seat across from Matt, between two of the girls. The one on his left is taller than him even sitting down, with long, perfectly styled blonde hair that falls halfway down her back and immaculate makeup. The girl on his right is much closer to his height and her pale hair looks like the ends have been dipped in pastel rainbows. 

“This is Neil,” Matt is saying. He points at the girl on Neil’s left and goes around the table, “That’s Allison, her boyfriend Seth, my girlfriend Danielle, and of course, Renee.”

Renee, the girl on his right with the rainbow hair and a cross around her neck, smiles at him too-sweetly and says, “Hi Neil, welcome to Columbia.”

He immediately doesn’t trust her. 

The dark-skinned girl beside Matt, his girlfriend, holds her hand out across the table to Neil. “Call me Dan,” she says. “No one calls me Danielle except my mother when she’s pissed.”

That leaves the other guy at the table, Seth, sitting on Allison’s other side. He appears to be the same brand of tall and and perfect as Allison, with a scruff of dark hair. He just grunts at Neil and looks back at his phone. None of them have the default school lunch that adorns Neil’s tray. 

Dan and Renee are both eating home packed lunches and Allison is slowly nibbling on a protein bar. Seth and Matt are plowing through a pile of hot Cheetos, a whole pizza, and bottles of Gatorade they clearly bought from the smaller food stands on the other side of the huge cafeteria. In Neil’s experience that means they’re all either rich or they have parents at home that care. Maybe both. 

This time he gets to try out his new backstory as they ask him question after question. His name is Neil Josten, he moved here from California because his mom got a new job. She works a lot, so he barely sees her, but she’s definitely around. Definitely alive. 

Definitely not dead, burned, and buried in the Pacific Ocean. 

Finally, they seem to get tired of it, and the subject changes to what they did over the summer. Neil lets the conversation wash over him and pulls out his schedule again. He has French next, which should be easy, and then Pre-Calculus before he gets a study hall last period. Between Pre-Calc and Physics he’s going to need it. 

“Oh, hey,” Allison says beside him. Neil looks up to see her peering over his shoulder. “We have French together. Maybe you can help me practice.”

Neil folds his schedule back up and shoves it in his pocket. “Maybe.”

“Hey,” Seth says, tearing himself away from his phone to frown at Allison. “Why can’t I help you?”

“Do you speak French?” Allison asks dryly. 

“Well, no,” Seth says, like he’s not sure why that matters. 

Neil doesn’t get to hear Allison’s response to that, because Matt is yelling “Coach!” and waving his hands around again.

There’s a man striding across the cafeteria towards them. He’s wearing track pants and a long-sleeved school shirt, but Neil can see the edges of tattoos peeking out around his wrists. He stops beside their table and looks at a clipboard in his hand, then back at Neil. 

“Neil Josten?” the coach says. At Neil’s nod, he waves the clipboard towards the door of the cafeteria. “Great, come with me.”

“Is he going to be on the team?” Matt’s entire face is lit up as he turns to Neil. “You play Exy?”

“Not since I was a kid,” Neil answers. He looks at the coach again, trying to figure out what he knows and how he knows it, but he can’t read anything in the man’s face. There should have been nothing in his falsified documents that drew anyone’s attention to him on the first day.

“Let’s talk in my office,” the coach says, and walks away before Neil can argue with him. He looks around, unsure if he should follow or if that’s just going to lead to his death. The decision is made for him when Allison shoves at his shoulder. 

“Go,” she says. “We need someone interesting on the team.”

“Hey!” Matt looks like he’s about to launch into a whole defense of how interesting he is, so Neil gets up and follows the coach. It seems like the better option, even if he dies at the end. 

After he catches up to the coach, they walk in silence for what seems like forever. Finally, they exit the main building, just as the bell rings, and the coach pulls out a set of keys to unlock another door. 

“I’m your new Watcher, David Wymack” the coach finally says. He leads Neil down a short hallway and pushes open the door to a cramped, over-crowded office. “Welcome to the Hellmouth.”

“My new what?” Neil blinks, confused. “I’m supposed to be in French class right now.”

“Your new Watcher,” Wymack says again. “The council sent me here a year ago. It took you long enough to show up.”

“Show up for what?” Neil is losing patience fast. “You aren’t making any sense.”

Wymack sighs, like the whole world has just been laid upon his shoulders. “You really don’t know, do you? No one ever told you?”

“Told me what?” Neil takes a step back, into the doorway. The panic is building in his chest. This man knows something. Neil has to get out of there, he has to _run_.

“Josten.” Wymack shoves a pile of papers off of a chair and points at it. “Sit the fuck down and listen.”

Every instinct Neil has is screaming at him to get out of there, but instead, he sits down. It’s not like he could get very far anyway; he can hear people talking down the hall. They’d surely stop him. Plus, he wants to know what Wymack thinks he knows about Neil.

Wymack drops his clipboard on his desk and sits on the edge of it, nearly overturning a huge coffee mug that’s printed with _Tears of my Athletes_. “You’re a vampire slayer.”

“I’m sorry,” Neil says, because he must have heard wrong. “What the fuck?”

And then, a beat later, “What’s a Hellmouth?”

\----

“So let me get this straight,” Neil says. It’s two hours later and he’s missed the rest of his classes for the day. Instead, he listened to Wymack talk about lore and myths and an incredibly detailed, profanity-ridden history of The Watcher’s Council -- the ancient organization tasked with training slayers and providing one-on-one mentorship.

Wymack called his French and Pre-Calc teachers and asked them not to count Neil absent. “Just getting him fitted for Exy gear,” he’d said. As if Neil has any intention of ever coming back to this school once he’s finally allowed to leave Wymack’s office.

Wymack nods, waiting for Neal to continue. Neil takes a deep breath.

“You expect me to believe,” he says. “That I’m a vampire slayer with _superpowers_ who was born to go around using sticks to murder the undead? And Columbia is a literal portal to Hell?”

“More or less,” Wymack agrees with a shrug. “Although I’m not sure I’d call them superpowers. Not until you’ve done some training. Which is where Exy comes in.”

“Exy.” Neil tries to keep the longing out of his voice when he says it. Exy is his favorite sport, it has been since he was five years old and his father signed him up for Little League. It’s one of the very, very few good memories he has of his father. Actually, maybe the only good memory. 

“Yes, Exy.” Wymack picks up the clipboard from earlier and flips through some papers. “Do you know how to play?”

“Yes,” Neil says, answering automatically. 

He immediately regrets it, because Wymack slaps the clipboard on the desk and grins at him. “Perfect. We need another striker.”

Neil stands up.It’s harder than it should be -- it’s been years since he wanted to do something as much as he wants to play Exy. “No,” he says, clamping down on the newly rising panic. “No to Exy, no to vampires, no to all of it. I’m leaving. This place is worse than fucking Baltimore.”

Wymack ignores him. “Come by in the morning, I’ll have your gear ready.” 

But Neil is already gone, Wymack’s voice fading away behind him. 

He runs all the way back to the empty house he’s squatting in. By the time he jumps the back fence and picks the lock, his heart is pounding and he’s covered in sweat, but he feels like he can breathe again. Locking himself in the back bedroom, the one where you can’t see the lights from the street, he flops down on the cot he’s using as a bed and surveys his small collection of possessions. 

Clothes, mostly. A few books and a couple of Exy magazines. The binder that contains his entire life and all of his memories, for better or worse. It’s not much, but it’s more than he had when he arrived in Columbia a few weeks ago. His mom didn’t let him carry books. She said they were too heavy. 

The plan had been to stay in Columbia for his senior year and graduate before he had to figure out what to do next. It doesn’t look like he’s going to get the luxury of time, though, not with everything Wymack told him. So instead of starting on homework, he quickly shoves everything into his threadbare duffle bag, then flips through his binder for his mom’s list of contacts.

A few hours later, under the cover of darkness, Neil jumps back over the fence, shoulders his duffle, and starts jogging across the park separating the subdivision from the main part of town. If he can get there, he can surely find a phone to use and start calling the few numbers he thinks might still be valid. One of them, a forger, his mom had talked to just before she died. That’s the one he’s counting on the most. If he can’t get a new identity, then it doesn’t matter where he goes. 

If he can, then he can get on a plane across the country. Maine, maybe. Somewhere he can get a shitty job and maybe a GED. Maybe he can take some classes online. 

He’s so deep in thought that he misses a curve in the path and almost jogs directly into a couple making out against a tree. 

“Fuck, sorry.” Neil takes a step back from where his shoulder bounced against one half of the couple’s back before he could stop. He needs to fucking pull it together. 

Then, the man turns around and Neil forgets everything. He’s shorter than Neil, but broad, with muscle tone clearly visible under his thin t-shirt. Blond hair is falling across his hazel eyes, but the blood ringing his mouth and dripping down his chin is what turns Neil’s blood cold. He stumbles back, tripping over his own feet and landing hard on the ground. 

The man is on him in a second, faster than Neil can track him. Sharp white fangs have dropped down over his bottom lip and Neil can smell the thick iron scent of blood. The dark smear across his too-pale face gleams ruby in the moonlight. 

_Vampire._

Neil digs his heels into the grass and pushes backwards, feeling for sticks on the ground behind him as he tries to drag himself out of the steel grip the man has on his bicep. He’s going to die here.

With a burst of effort, Neil wrenches to the left, hard, and his arm comes free. He scrambles to his feet, putting distance between himself and the vampire in front of him. The vampire doesn’t go for him again, he just gives Neil a long, sneering look and spits out, “ _Slayer._ ”

Neil turns and runs, clutching his bag against the front of his body. He goes the opposite direction of his house, darting through backyards and over fences until he’s sure he isn’t being followed. 

Finally, what feels like hours later, he jumps back over his familiar fence and lets himself into the empty house. He should probably find another one, but he can do that tomorrow. For now, he curls up on his cot and tries to make a new plan. 

In the morning, he’ll talk to Wymack. He’ll stay until he feels prepared to fight things like the man in the park. Then he’ll leave. He’ll leave before he gets too comfortable. 

And if he’s going to stay, he might as well play Exy.


	2. They're Called Stakes

When he gets to the gym the next morning, an hour before school starts, the Exy team is doing laps around the outside of the building. 

Matt waves to Neil with enthusiasm as he jogs by with Dan right on his heels. Sweat is shining off the tight braids in Matt’s hair, but Dan looks barely winded, despite the fact that she’s having to move twice as fast to keep up with Matt’s longer strides. 

“Coach is in his office,” Dan calls. “He’s waiting for you.”

Neil gives her a thumbs up and heads for the doors to the gym. He hadn’t slept at all the night before, too busy mentally planning a variety of escapes. None of them ended well, not with a monster out there that knows who he is and what he looks like. So, here he is. 

Wymack is standing just inside the doors, leaning against a wall with his arms crossed. “Practice starts at 6 AM,” he grunts at Neil. “You’re late.”

“You didn’t tell me a time,” Neil shoots back, conveniently ignoring that he’d run away before Wymack had the chance. “You’re lucky I’m here at all.”

Wymack shrugs. “I figured you’d be back. Come on.”

They go through a set of double doors, down a hall, and through another set of doors into a violently orange dressing room. “Columbia Cubs” is emblazoned in huge orange letters above a row of orange lockers. Orange benches are scattered around the room. Even the water fountain in the corner is orange. 

Neil looks at the floor, because it’s black and it doesn’t hurt his eyes. Wymack crosses the room and flings open a locker. 

“This is yours.” He gestures at the gear inside. “Try this on and let me know what doesn’t fit. We can dig around in the back until we find some that does.”

Neil steps closer, reaching out to touch the orange and white pads. They’re worn around the edges and have clearly been used before, by other players in other seasons, but Neil doesn’t give a fuck. He drags all the gear to the next room, lined with sinks, bathroom stalls, and showers with half-wall partitions. It’s currently empty, so Neil strips his shirt and jeans off and starts pulling on the pads, guards, and uniform. Most of it fits well enough, as good as he’s probably going to get without expensive customization. 

Either Wymack is amazing at eyeballing clothing sizes or all of Neil’s measurements were written out on that clipboard. He’s not sure which one is worse. The third option is that these are just the smallest pads they have. 

When he steps back out into the locker room, Wymack looks him up and down. “Those work?”

Neil nods, tugging at the hem of his jersey. Number 10. 

Wymack tosses him a sharpie. “Write your number inside them when you take them off.” Then he bangs out through the door and Neil is alone. 

He pulls the gear off one piece at a time and writes “Josten 10” inside them, scribbling out the names and number of players who came before him. 

After he finishes the last one and shuts his locker, he realizes that he never told Wymack about the vampire in the park.

\----

At lunch, Matt throws an arm around Neil’s shoulder and offers him a slice of pizza. He’s devouring it alone today, Seth is nowhere to be seen. It seems like more trouble than it’s worth to say no, so Neil takes the pizza. He’s halfway through it when Dan drops into the seat beside him and starts unpacking her lunch.

“Welcome to the team,” she says, carefully unwrapping a sandwich from its plastic wrap prison. “I’m your captain, so let me know if anyone is being a dick.”

She aims that last word at the empty seat where Seth had been the day before. Neil doesn’t ask, because he doesn’t care. These people are his teammates, not his friends. 

He reminds himself of that as Matt slides another slice of pizza onto Neil’s lunch tray. He does have to admit that it’s better than the limp fries and cold chicken he got from the main cafeteria line. 

“Come out with us tonight,” Matt says, turning to face Neil. “It’s 90’s night at Eden’s Twilight.”

Neil stares at him. “It’s Tuesday. It’s a school night.”

Matt shrugs and makes big, pleading eyes at Neil. He looks like an overgrown labrador. “We won’t be out super late, and we don’t have practice in the morning. It’ll be fun. Don’t you like to have fun?”

Dan makes a skeptical noise. “We only don’t have practice in the morning if no one screws up at practice this afternoon. That seems unlikely.”

Allison, who has been staring morosely at her phone the whole time, finally looks up. “Eden’s?” she asks hopefully. “We’re going out?”

“Only if practice goes smoothly,” Renee says. She tucks a piece of rainbow dipped hair behind her ear. “So probably not.”

“Fuck.” Allison drops her head to the table. “Why is everything so shitty?”

Neil asks himself that question every day.

\----

Neil still hasn’t gotten a chance to talk to Wymack again by the time he makes it to study hall. It’s supposed to be held in the library, but he’s barely found an empty table and set his books down when the librarian approaches him.

“Are you Neil Josten?” At his nod, she sets a small pile of books on the table in front of them. “Perfect. Coach Wymack has asked that you read these. He would also like to see you in his office.”

Neil glances at the books, the one on top is titled “Vampyres”. He almost laughs out loud at the sheer ridiculousness of it. 

“Um, thanks,” he says. He’s going to have to get a bigger backpack if Wymack is going to expect him to haul all this shit around. 

“I’m Abby, er, Ms. Winfield. Please let me know if you need anything.” The librarian gives him a warm smile and a pat on the shoulder before rushing off to deal with a group of kids shouting in a far corner. 

Neil sighs, heavily, and shoves all of the books into his bag. Or tries to. He ends up carrying the least offensive of them, a plain black book with “History of Myth” written in gold on the front. 

When he gets to Wymack’s office, he drops his incredibly heavy bag on the floor with a loud thump and sits in the still-cleared chair. Wymack barely even glances at him. 

“A vampire tried to kill me in the park last night,” Neil says, conversationally.

That gets him a brief frown, at least. “Probably won’t be the last time,” Wymack says. “Did you stake it?”

“Well, no.” Neil shrugs. “I didn’t have any sticks.”

Wymack closes his eyes and presses his palm against the bridge of his nose. Neil is pretty sure he’s mumbling about sticks under his breath. “Stakes,” he says. “They’re called stakes, and you need to practice with them. Get up.”

With a gesture at Neil, Wymack pushes away from his desk and stands up. Neil does the same and follows Wymack out of the office and down a hallway. There are more offices there, dark and unused. Neil could probably sleep in one of them if he can’t find another empty house. So that’s something good, at least. 

They end up in a room at the end of the hall. It’s huge and empty; their footsteps echo off the concrete floors and bare walls as they cross to the center of the room. There’s already a bright orange duffle bag on the floor, with the school logo printed on the side. Wymack kneels to unzip it and tosses Neil a piece of wood. It’s about 8 inches long and smooth in his hand. One end has been whittled down to a sharp point. 

“Stake,” Wymack says. “Not a stick.”

Neil tosses the stake up and catches it, testing the weight. It’s solid and heavy, he can definitely feel how it could do some damage if he used it correctly. While he’s doing that, Wymack opens a small closet on the far side of the room and rolls out a rubber shooting dummy in a wagon. It looks a lot like the one Neil’s father used to teach him how to throw a knife. The dummy has a huge red X taped over its heart. 

“So the goal is --” Wymack starts to say, before Neil cuts him off.

“I think I get it,” he says, and throws the stake at the dummy. Aiming directly for the center of the X.

He misses.

The stake is heavier than a knife, and doesn’t balance the same way. It bounces off the dummy’s impressive abs and falls to the floor. 

Wymack sighs.

“Get closer,” he says, kicking the stake across the floor to Neil. “And put some force behind it. All you’re going to do that way is piss them off.”

Neil takes a few steps closer and tries again, this time the stake hits the X dead center, but it still falls to the ground. 

“At least you can aim.” Wymack kicks the stake back again. “Keep trying.”

They go on like that for an hour, until Wymack’s watch beeps and signals that it’s time for Exy practice. Neil’s right arm is aching, but he has managed to figure out the right distance and force to drive the stake into the dummy’s heart 90% of the time. He grabs a couple of the stakes on his way out, just in case.

\----

Practice goes smoothly, but only because Dan threatens all the underclassmen in the locker room beforehand. The ones who aren’t scared of her are too busy watching Neil to cause any problems. It takes Neil about half the practice to get his feet under him, but then he falls into the rhythm of the game and his playing smoothes out.

“No practice tomorrow morning,” Wymack says at the end, and the whole team cheers. 

While he waits for the showers to empty out, Neil removes his Exy gear one piece at a time and carefully arranges it in his locker. Beside him, Matt has just dumped his gear in at random and it makes Neil’s eye twitch. When he finally wanders out of the gym, Allison is waiting for him, leaning against the side of her shiny blue convertible. 

“What are you wearing tonight?” she asks. 

Neil looks down at his worn jeans and t-shirt and shrugs. “This?”

“Not if you’re going to be seen with me,” Allison says, looking horrified at the prospect. She points at the passenger side of her car. “Get in, loser. We’re going shopping.”

Neil tosses his bag in the backseat and climbs into the car obediently. He’s not sure what’s wrong with his clothes, they’re clean and there aren’t any visible holes, but it’s not like he has anything better to do.

\----

By the time they meet Matt and Dan for dinner, Neil is wearing black jeans and a deep green shirt that are both so tight he’s convinced they’re the wrong size. Allison swore up and down that this was how clothes are _supposed_ to fit, but Neil still feels uncomfortable. His scars aren’t visible, though, which is all he really cares about.

When they get to the diner, Dan wolf-whistles when she sees him and Matt says “Damn, boy.” Neil feels his cheeks go pink at the attention. He’s grateful when Allison slides into the booth next to him and starts talking at length about the fight she had with Seth. Neil has already heard it all while she had him trapped in a dressing room, so he tunes her out. 

They meet Renee outside of Eden’s Twilight, which turns out to be a converted warehouse on the outskirts of downtown Columbia that has been turned into an all-ages club. There’s a line wrapped around the front of the building, but the bouncer just nods at Renee and lets them all in. Neil steps in and walks into a wall of sound. It looks--and smells--like every teenager in town has unleashed their hormones inside. Light dances around the room, illuminating a girl in pink here, a kissing couple in purple there. Movement at his side makes him blink his attention back to his group--the girls are splitting off for the dance floor, so Neil follows Matt towards the bar spanning the whole back wall. While Matt orders, Neil belatedly sizes up the interior of the club, mapping out possible escape routes. He’s halfway around the balcony when his eyes catch on a man leaning against the railing, blond hair flashing under the club’s moving lights. 

It’s the vampire from last night, looking directly at Neil. There’s no blood on his face this time, but the pale skin and the harsh cut of his jawline are unmistakeable. 

Neil freezes, vividly aware of the stakes uselessly hidden in his bag in Allison’s trunk. Before he can consider even a single option, the vampire is gone. He vanishes into the crowd and Neil loses track of him. 

“Dude.” Matt’s voice startles Neil out of his frantic search for the vampire and Neil turns. Matt is carrying a tray loaded with sodas and bottles of water. “You good? Let’s find a table.”

“I’m fine,” Neil says. He looks around one more time, but doesn’t see the vampire anywhere, so he follows Matt around the edge of the dance floor to an empty booth. The girls show up as Matt is unloading the tray and claim drinks for themselves. 

Matt produces a flask and pours shots into his, Dan’s, and Allison’s drink. He doesn’t even offer it to Renee, but he holds the flask up to Neil and makes a questioning face. Neil shakes his head, pulling his soda a little closer. He’s only ever used alcohol as a painkiller, but he knows how fuzzy it makes him.

Neil sits at the table for a while while the others come and go from the dance floor, stopping regularly at the table to talk and drink. It’s just him and Allison, who is typing furiously on her phone, when a man comes up to the table. 

“Hey, do you want to dance?” the man asks, yelling over the beat of the music. 

Neil assumes he’s talking to Allison, but she nudges him and jerks her head at the guy, saying, “He means you.”

Surprised, Neil looks at the man. He’s several inches taller than Neil, and tousled dark curls are falling over one side of his forehead. Neil is opening his mouth to say no when he feels a sharp pain in his ribs as Allison digs her elbow in and hisses in his ear. “He’s hot, go dance.”

Neil doesn’t know what hot looks like, and he doesn’t know how to dance, but he gets up anyway and allows himself to be led to the dance floor. The man weaves them through the crowd effortlessly, bodies parting and coming together again behind them.

“I don’t know how to dance,” he yells, when the man turns to face him. They’re in the middle of the club, with people moving all around them, pushing Neil right up against the man’s chest. 

The man takes Neil’s hands and puts them on his shoulders, before sliding his own hands low on Neil’s hips. “I’ll show you,” he says, leaning in so that his lips are almost brushing Neil’s ear. 

“Just find the beat,” the man says into Neil’s ear. “Like this.” His hands on Neil’s hips are guiding them both and Neil just goes with it, letting himself be moved along to the music. He keeps one eye out for blond hair, but it’s impossible to see anything with the constantly shifting light. The longer the song goes on, the more exposed he feels, and the more he wishes he was still safely in the booth with Allison. He’d rather ask a hundred questions about her fight with Seth than be awkwardly bumping against this enthusiastic stranger. 

The song finally comes to an end, the beat changes, and Neil realizes they’re on the far edge of the dance floor. The crowd is thinner here, and Neil is momentarily grateful when the man lets him go and steps back. He feels air circulating around him for the first time since he walked in the door.

The relief lasts until a voice says, “That isn’t what I meant, Nicky,” and the blond vampire appears from the shadows, light bleeding across his pale features. His pallor contrasts sharply with the expensive-looking black monotone of his clothing. Neil still doesn’t know much about fashion, but he saw enough high price tags today that he’s got a better grasp on how much those artfully ripped jeans must have cost. 

Neil tenses as the man, Nicky, apparently, steps back further and puts his hands up. “You said to fetch the slayer, you didn’t say _how_.” He winks at Neil and melts back into the crowd, leaving Neil alone with the vampire. 

The vampire looks at Neil, dragging his gaze all the way down Neil’s body and back up again. Neil is hyper aware of his new clothes, almost as expensive as he’s guessing the vampire’s were, and how they cling to his body. 

“So this is the new slayer,” the vampire says. His face is blank, emotionless, but his eyes are intense as they pin Neil in place. 

“We met last night,” Neil says. “I was the one you weren’t sucking all the blood out of.”

The vampire scoffs, dismissive. “That wasn’t me.”

 _Yes, it was_ , Neil is about to say, but he takes a closer look. The hair is the same, the eyes are the same, but the vampire is right, _he’s_ not the same. Neil can’t put a finger on what the difference is, but he has no doubt that there is one.

“No,” he says slowly. “I guess it wasn’t.”

The vampire looks startled for a brief flash, but his expression flattens again instantly. “So you aren’t as dumb as you look, slayer.”

Neil rolls his eyes, reckless in the face of a monster, but he doesn’t care. “Stop calling me slayer, you sound ridiculous. My name is Neil.”

“It’s nice to meet you, _Neil_ ,” the vampire says. “I’m probably going to kill you.”

Neil looks around them, pointedly. No one is even looking in their direction. “I don’t see anything stopping you.”

“A death wish is boring.” The vampire is suddenly in Neil’s space, so close they’re almost touching. “You don’t strike me as boring.”

Neil looks down, meets the vampire’s eyes. This close, the hazel is flecked with gold. Neil can’t look away. “What do I strike you as?”

He feels a cool hand close around his throat. The vampire’s fingers sink lightly into his skin and Neil shivers. Every nerve in his body is on high alert. He can feel his pulse pounding under the vampire’s palm. 

“Interesting,” the vampire says. “You strike me as interesting. I’m Andrew.”

Then the hand on his neck drops and Andrew disappears. Neil lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding and looks around. It’s like time has suddenly restarted as the noises from the club filter back into his awareness. The same song is playing. He’d been talking to Andrew for less than three minutes.

Neil sucks in a lungful of air and breathes out slowly, counts to ten in French in his head. His heartbeat slowly steadies, and he turns back to the dance floor, searching out his teammates.

Later, curled up on his cot, in the house he forgot to move out of, Neil dreams about throbbing music and hazel-gold eyes.


	3. The Monster Twins

Neil is waiting outside the gym when Wymack gets there the next morning. Practice doesn’t start for half an hour, but Neil has questions. 

Wymack squints at where Neil is leaning beside the front doors and sighs. He doesn’t say anything, just unlocks the door and waves Neil in ahead of him. Neil drops into the chair in Wymack’s office and waits while Wymack starts up an ancient coffee pot and unearths a coffee mug that reads _WORLD’S OKAYEST COACH_.

“Tell me about the vampires at Eden’s Twilight,” Neil says, once the coffee is brewing,

Wymack sighs. “Dammit, they took you to Eden’s? I told them not to go there.”

Neil shrugs, not particularly apologetic. He does sort of remember Matt drunkenly making Neil pinky swear that he wouldn’t tell Wymack, but Neil thought that was about the underage drinking, not the location.

“Andrew and Aaron,” Wymack says. “The monster twins. I assume you met them?”

Neil nods. “Sort of. I met Andrew at the club. The other one attacked me in the park. There was a third one, too. Nicky.” 

Because the more he thinks about it, the more he’s convinced Nicky wasn’t human. Something about the way he’d moved them through the crowd and how Neil hadn’t been able to feel his body heat even when they’d been pressed against each other. 

“He’s with them, too. Andrew warned me off all three of them when I first got here.” Wymack pours himself a mug of coffee and sits at his desk, looking at Neil over piles of paperwork. “None of them tried to hurt you?”

Neil considers for a second. Andrew and Nicky had actively not hurt him. Aaron had left a row of finger bruises on his upper arm, but hadn’t done any lasting damage -- the marks had been gone when he woke up the next morning -- so he shakes his head. Wymack continues, “I usually leave them alone. They don’t make trouble and they put down vamps who do. Of course, there wasn’t a slayer here before, so I guess all bets are off now.”

“What does that mean?” Neil asks, narrowing his eyes in suspicion. “Do you want me to kill them? Because I think they’d kill me first.” He thinks about driving a stake through Andrew’s designer v-neck and doesn’t like how unsettled the idea makes him feel. 

“There’s no reason to throw the first stake.” Wymack shrugs. “But it might come to that. For now, you need to start patrolling the cemeteries.”

“Wow,” Neil says, flatly. “This slayer thing just keeps getting better.”

\----

When Wymack said “patrolling the cemeteries,” he meant it literally. Wymack keeps a running list of funerals dates from obituaries, and every night he drags Neil out to lap the cemeteries where recent burials have taken place. He stakes a couple of vampires, newly risen and feral, but uncoordinated and easy to dispatch. Mostly, they talk about Exy. It’s not the worst way Neil has ever spent his time.

He doesn’t see Andrew again for over a week. He goes back to Eden’s with the rest of the upperclassmen on Saturday, after Wymack graciously allows him a night off. He’s wearing another new outfit, courtesy of Allison’s credit card, but Andrew is nowhere to be seen. He catches a glimpse of Nicky, leaning over the bar and talking with one of the male bartenders, but there is no sign of either of the twins. This should be a good thing. It’s not like Neil _wants_ to spend more time around the undead. Or maybe he does, because he can’t help the disappointment in the pit of his stomach when they leave. 

Thursday night, he’s circling an older cemetery while Wymack watches an old Exy game on his phone, sitting on a bench in a dark corner where the graves are decades old and there is zero chance of a vampire bursting out of the dirt beside his feet. He’s been giving Neil more and more space on every patrol, so Neil assumes Wymack is gearing up to let Neil do it alone. Neil isn’t particularly looking forward to it. 

He’s on the opposite side of the cemetery from Wymack when he feels the tingling at the base of his spine that he’s come to associate with vampires. He didn’t recognize it that first night in the park, but his senses are getting better with practice and training. 

When he looks around, both of the newly covered graves are still and undisturbed. The tingling is still there, creeping its way up higher as Neil turns in a circle, trying to spot the vampire that could be lurking in any of the shadows. 

“Slayer,” a voice says behind him, and Neil grits his teeth, forcing down the startled urge to flinch. He turns around slowly, fixing his face into the most unimpressed expression he can muster. There are two vampires standing there. They’re both taller and bigger than him, dressed in identical black slacks and red dress shirts. 

“I didn’t know vampires were moonlighting as maîtres de,” Neil says. “You’re a long way from your host stands.”

The taller of the two vampires bares his teeth in Neil’s direction, fangs flashing. Neil assumes it’s meant to be scary. “Mouthy slayers are the most fun to torture,” he sneers.

“Interesting,” Neil says. He tosses the stake in his hand in the air, and catches it idly. “Because all vampires turn to ash the same, no matter how big they think their dicks are.”

The shorter vampire takes a step towards Neil, who grips his stake tighter, bracing for a fight. Before anything else can happen, Neil sees a blur from the corner of his eye and then Andrew is standing between him and the two vampires. 

“Tell your little prince to keep his hands off my things,” Andrew says. There’s another blur and the shorter vampire evaporates into dust at the end of the stake Andrew is holding in one hand. He looks at the other vampire, who takes a step back, turns, and vanishes. 

Andrew turns to Neil, who knows he’s gaping, with the stake hanging loosely between his fingers. Andrew reaches out and pushes Neil’s mouth closed with one finger under his chin. He looks incredibly bored by the whole ordeal.

“Why are the Moriyamas after you?” Andrew asks. 

Neil frowns, searching through the dregs of his memories. He comes up empty-handed. “I don’t know,” he says. “I’ve never heard that name before.”

Andrew stares at him for a long moment, then says. “Come with me.”

He turns and walks away, clearly expecting Neil to follow. Neil looks over his shoulder, to where Wymack is standing a few feet away. He hesitates for a beat, unsure, but says, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Then he goes after Andrew.

\----

Andrew’s car is sleek, black, and looks more expensive than Allison’s convertible. Neil climbs into the passenger seat and focuses all of his energy on calming the pounding of his heart. He knows Andrew has to be able to hear it over the low hum of the engine. 

Neil expects them to head downtown, to what passes for luxury housing in Columbia. Instead, Andrew turns towards the suburbs. They drive in silence and Neil forces himself to sit still, even with the amount of nervous energy thrumming through his body. 

He can sense Andrew beside him, like a magnetic field drawing all of Neil’s attention. He doesn’t turn his head to look, but he desperately _wants_ to. 

“I don’t belong to you,” Neil says, when he can’t hold it in anymore. “You don’t even know me. And you’re a _vampire_.

It takes Andrew so long to respond that Neil is convinced he isn’t going to, but then he says, “You’re in my Hellmouth, that makes you mine.”

He sounds so sure and final about it, that Neil doesn’t argue again. 

They finally turn onto a quiet, tree-lined street and Andrew pulls the car into the garage of a nondescript two-story house. It’s the exact opposite of where Neil expected Andrew to live. Andrew turns the engine off and gets out of the car without a single glance at Neil. All he can do is follow. 

He’s led through a generic kitchen full of shiny appliances, and then into a comfortably furnished living room, where Nicky and another man are sitting on a huge sectional sofa. A movie is playing quietly on the enormous television across from them, but neither of them seem to be watching it. Nicky is looking at his phone, feet propped up on a glass coffee table scattered with cups and remote controls. The other man is sprawled across half the sofa, intently studying the Exy magazine open on his lap. Another vampire, Neil decides, but at least this one has good taste.

Nicky looks up and his eyes widen when he spots Neil standing behind Andrew. His mouth opens, closes, and opens again before he says, “You brought the _slayer_ home?”

“His name is Neil.” Andrew crosses the room and snatches the magazine away from the second man, who yelps in outrage. “The Moriyamas are after him.”

The man grabs his magazine back from Andrew and opens it again. “What do you expect me to do about it?” he asks. He doesn’t look at Neil.

Neil has no idea why Andrew brought him here, or what Andrew was doing at the cemetery in the first place. None of the vampires in the room feel threatening, though, so he stays where he is and waits to see what happens next. 

Andrew and the vampire with the Exy magazine stare each other down for a long moment. Finally, the vampire says, “The Moriyamas kill slayers, Andrew. They might as well have business cards.”

“No, Kevin,” Andrew says. He’s still standing half in front of Neil, between him and the two vampires on the couch. “Kengo kills slayers, but the vampires that were after _this_ slayer were sent by Riko.”

“You can’t possibly know that.” Kevin drops the Exy magazine on the coffee table and finally turns his piercing green eyes on Neil. “Besides, Riko doesn’t care about random slayers.”

“Oh, were they wearing the uniforms?” Nicky asks. He’s been watching the exchange like a tennis match. “I do love a vampire in uniform.”

“Yes,” Andrew says. He sounds pained. “They were wearing the uniforms.”

“Look,” Neil interjects. “As fascinating as this is, can someone please tell me what the fuck is going on? I have practice in like, seven hours and you’re wasting my time.”

He figured out quickly that he is _very_ good at Exy.It might be the slayer powers that make him the fastest player on the team, but he doesn’t care. He has also figured out that he’s even better when he gets decent sleep. Their first game is next week and Neil wants to win. Which means he can’t be sleep deprived at practice because he spent all night listening to vampires argue.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Andrew turns on him, eyes narrowed. “Am I inconveniencing you by trying to keep you alive?”

“Yeah,” Neil shoots back. “A little.” 

“Why are we keeping him alive again?” Kevin looks from Andrew to Neil and back again, like they’re two puzzle pieces he can’t quite fit together. 

“Because I said we are,” Andrew says. He looks at Neil. "This is Kevin Day, he’s the only other slayer Riko ever showed an interest in. You can see how that ended. If you would also like to be turned into a vampire and abandoned in the street, feel free to leave and never come back.”

With that, Andrew gives the whole room one last glare, spins on his heel, and leaves. 

“Wow,” Nicky says, as they watch Andrew disappear up the stairs. “He never talks that much.”


	4. Vampire Daddy

By the time Neil is home and on his cot, his brain is spinning in too many directions for sleep to come. He’d sat on the end of the sofa in Andrew’s living room for over an hour, trying to avoid Nicky’s handsy attempts at unnecessary comfort while Kevin narrated his entire life story. As unwilling as he’d been to even look at Neil at first, the opportunity for an audience seemed to get him talking. 

Or maybe it was the text from Andrew that Nicky gleefully read out loud: “Tell Day that I’m not taking the slayer home until he talks.”

Neil would have just left on his own, except he wasn’t entirely sure where they were in relation to his house and he didn’t particularly enjoy the thought of running aimlessly around Columbia until something looked familiar. So he stayed.

Kevin’s mother was a Watcher, from the same council of babysitters as Wymack. Their entire job was to try to keep slayers alive and Hellmouths relatively contained. According to Kevin, Columbia was the only Hellmouth on the East Coast. 

“Really? What about New Jersey?” Nicky had asked, earning a derisive look from Kevin. “Because we were there in the early 1900s and I would have bet money on it being a portal to Hell.”

“No,” Kevin had said, frowning. “Jersey just sucks. How do you not know where the Hellmouths are?”

Nicky had waved a hand dismissively. “Who can keep up with such things when there are so many hot men around to pay attention to instead?”

When Kevin was 12, his mother had been murdered in front of him -- an event that hit way too close to home for Neil’s comfort -- and he’d been taken by vampires. Namely, the Moriyama vampires, an ancient coven with strongholds in every developed nation. The vampire he’d been brought to, Riko, was one of the younger Moriyama vamps, clocking in at only 300ish years of age.

“Wait.” Neil had looked at Nicky. “How old are you and Andrew?” And Aaron, he supposes, but no one had mentioned the other twin, so Neil wasn’t going to be the one to bring him up. 

Nicky had beamed at him, clearly thrilled with the attention. “Well,” he’d said. “It was a dark and stormy night in the summer of 1815.”

“So a little over 200 years,” Neil had said, cutting Nicky off before he could even get started. “Thanks.”

Kevin had been gifted to Riko as a pet, a slayer to train and use to help take down vampires who crossed him. Apparently he’d been promised a slayer several years before, but when that hadn’t worked out, he’d set his sights on Kevin. Neil suspects that there’s a reason for that, more to the story, but Kevin didn’t volunteer and Neil didn’t ask. 

Riko’s sire -- “Vampire daddy,” Nicky had clarified -- Kengo, had sent Riko to the leader of the American coven, Tetsuji. Except Kevin called Tetsuji “The Master” and the dead tone in his voice when he’d said it had made Neil shudder. 

“Kengo,” Kevin had said. “Loves nothing more than to spill the blood of as many slayers as possible. He should be the one after you, not Riko.”

Neil had shrugged. “I don’t care who it is, I just care why and how to stop them.”

“I don’t know why,” was Kevin’s answer. “Probably because he wants a new slayer and you’re the first one he’s stumbled over. Word tends to spread quickly when slayers pop up on top of Hellmouths. As for stopping them, you can’t. The Moriyamas always win.”

“Is that what happened to you?” Neil had asked. “They won?”

“I made Riko angry,” Kevin had said, like it should have been obvious. “So he punished me.”

“And now we’re one big happy family.” Nicky had scooted over enough to throw an arm around Kevin, which Kevin immediately shoved away. Nicky didn’t appear to be phased by the rejection. Neil has a feeling that Nicky is the only one who would use the word “happy” to describe any of the other vampires living in the house. 

“Text Andrew back,” Kevin had told Nicky in response. “Tell him I’m done talking.”

Then, he’d picked up the Exy magazine and gone right back to reading it. Ignoring Neil and Nicky entirely. 

Mere seconds after Nicky had tapped out a message on his phone, Andrew had reappeared at Neil’s elbow, making him jump. “I know telling people to wear a bell is cliche,” Neil had told him. “But you really might need one. A collar would go nicely with the goth thing you’ve got going on.”

He’d gestured at Andrew’s black clothing -- almost identical in both quality and appearance to what he’d been wearing at the club last time Neil saw him -- and the black combat boots and armbands that he may or may not have been wearing before. Most of Neil’s memories from that night involve the gold in Andrew’s eyes and Andrew’s hand around his throat.

“Fuck off,” Andrew had said, and led the way back out to his car.

He hadn’t asked where Neil lived, just drove him to the front of the dark, empty house and waited while Neil climbed out. He’d been gone before Neil could finish scanning the street for threats. 

Neil really, really needs to find a new house.

\----

Neil is a disaster at practice the next morning. He misses the ball as much as he catches it and his throws are sloppy and rushed. The afternoon practice doesn’t go much better. Dan is frustrated with him, and Neil is annoyed with himself on the whole team’s behalf. He can’t keep letting vampires and their bullshit interfere with Exy.

Afterwards, when he’s waited for the rest of the team to leave, then showered and dressed in the empty locker room, he comes out to find Matt leaning against his truck, waiting for Neil. Neil has never had a friend before, but he’s starting to think he might have found one in Matt, with his easy smiles and respect for Neil’s boundaries. He has never once asked a question that Neil didn’t feel comfortable answering. Mostly, he just talks and lets Neil be silently swept along with him. 

“Want to grab some food?” Matt asks. “I’m paying.”

Neil was planning to try to scope out a new house, one that hadn’t already been pinned down by vampires, but he guesses that it can wait for one more day. Seth and Allison are in between fights and Neil spent all of lunch watching them make out across the table. It hadn’t done much for his appetite. 

“Sure,” he says. “I could eat.”

He’s shoving his bag behind the passenger seat of Matt’s truck when he hears a commotion on the other side of the vehicle, followed by a growl and a yell. Neil acts without thinking. He grabs a stake from his bag and easily leaps into the bed of the truck, then out the other side to stand between Matt and whatever is threatening him. It’s the middle of the afternoon, so it can’t be a vampire, but Neil is not expecting the creature he finds facing off with Matt, who is holding one strap of his backpack in his hands like an old lady wielding her purse at a mugger. 

The creature is about Matt’s height, which gives it almost a foot on Neil, and muscular with orange skin and bony horns protruding from its shoulders. Another set of horns curl down from each side of its head. It’s snarling at Matt with a mouthful of jagged teeth. 

As Neil lands between them, the creature spits a green mucousy substance directly at him. Neil dodges to the right and the mucus hits the asphalt at his feet, leaving a steaming crater in the parking lot. Behind him, he hears Matt curse and scramble out of the way. 

Neil isn’t sure how much help a stake is going to be in this situation, but it’s the only thing he has, so he throws himself forward, aiming the stake up at an angle and driving it into the underside of the creature’s jaw with as much strength as he can put behind it. Thanks to his rapidly developing slayer powers, that’s a lot. The stake goes in to the hilt, tearing through leathery skin and sending the creature reeling. It staggers backwards, then hits the ground and dissolves into a puddle of the same green mucus, which quickly sizzles away to nothing. The only evidence that it was ever there is Neil’s stake, laying between two scorched holes in the ground next to Matt’s truck. 

“Shit,” Neil mutters. He ducks down to grab his stake and turns around to face Matt, who is looking at Neil like he’s never seen him before. 

Neil is about to apologize and say he totally gets it if Matt never wants to speak to him again, when Matt takes a deep breathe and bursts out with, “That was so badass, I didn’t know you were fucking _Black Widow_.”

Neil blinks at him in surprise. “Who’s that?”

“Nevermind.” Matt throws open the door to the truck and all but shoves Neil inside. They’re on the driver’s side, so Neil has to climb over the center console to get to the passenger seat. He hasn’t even gotten his seatbelt buckled before Matt is starting the engine and peeling out of the parking lot. Neil leans back against the headrest and closes his eyes. He mentally counts to ten, then to twenty in French until he feels centered again. When he opens his eyes, they’re pulling into the same diner they eat at before they go to Eden’s Twilight. 

He expected Matt to run away in horror and maybe have Neil kicked off the team, which would have been a perfectly valid reaction to that scene in the parking lot. He _didn’t_ expect Matt to bring him here, sit him in a booth, and order the cheese sticks Neil likes before leaning both elbows on the table and saying, with real concern in his voice, “What happened back there? Are you in trouble? What was that thing?”

Under any other circumstances, Neil would lie until the questions stop. He takes one look at the genuine worry in Matt’s huge, brown, Disney princess eyes and can’t bring himself to tell him anything but the truth. At least this part of it. 

“I’m a vampire slayer,” he says, and launches into the whole story. He tells Matt about Wymack and training and patrolling. He does not tell Matt about Andrew or Kevin. He doesn’t know what he’d say, anyway. 

When he’s finished, Matt is staring at him with his mouth open and a cheese stick dangling between his fingers. “Holy shit,” Matt says. Then, “Of course Columbia is a portal to Hell. That makes so much sense.”

“I know,” Neil says, dryly. “Trust me.” He’d told Wymack it was worse than Baltimore and his opinion has yet to be changed. He’s been to a lot of cities and seen a lot of shit, but nothing like what he’s witnessed in the last two weeks in Columbia.

“Was that thing a vampire?” Matt asks. He dips his cheese stick in sauce and finally takes a bite out of it. “Because it didn’t look anything like Edward Cullen.”

Neil doesn’t ask who that is. He can’t keep up with the pop culture references his teammates constantly throw around, so he just assumes it’s a famous fictional vampire and shakes his head. “No. I don’t know what that was.”

Then he remembers Ms. Winfield and his insanely heavy backpack, and says, “Oh, but the librarian gave me some books from Wymack. I think one of them is about demons. That thing looked like a demon, right?”

Matt nods enthusiastically. “Totally a demon. A horned, acid spitting demon. Want to come home with me and I’ll help you look through the books? My parents are in New York until Monday, so we can do whatever we want.”

This time, Neil doesn’t hesitate. “Okay,” he says. “I could really use the help.”

He means it. He’s been alone since his mom died and for almost a decade before that it was only the two of them. Having a friend is a novelty. It doesn’t hurt that Matt might be the nicest person Neil has ever met.

\----

An hour later they’re sprawled across the couches in Matt’s enormous, expensively furnished living room. Well, one of the living rooms. Matt had led him straight past another one, saying, “That’s the formal living room. It has the heirlooms.”

This one has a wall-size television, multiple pieces of intricate African-inspired artwork, and smaller, delicate decorations that Neil is afraid to get too close to, lest he break them. He can’t imagine what they must be keeping in the formal living room.

He’s considering making a trip to the bathroom so he can poke around and see, when Matt sits up straight. “I found it,” he exclaims. He holds a book up, victorious. “It’s called a Fyarl demon and that stuff it was spitting at you is _paralyzing mucus_.”

Matt leans over and hands the book to Neil, who quickly skims the page. It’s definitely the same demon. His eyes catch on a line at the bottom, “Fyarls are known for serving other demons, especially vampires.”

Maybe this wasn’t a case of the Hellmouth spitting out a demon in response to the presence of a slayer, like another book said. Maybe this was personal.

He drops the book on the couch beside him and groans. “I’m going to have to tell Wymack about this on patrol tonight.”

“Oh.” Matt looks at him, hands clasped together in front of his chest. “Can I come with you? Please? I promise I’ll stay out of the way.”

Neil shrugs. Matt is already hip-deep in the clusterfuck that seems to have become Neil’s life. “Sure, why not? We can bring our racquets and get some practice in.”

He’ll be damned if his Exy season gets ruined just because he’s playing it on top of a Hellmouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Fyarl demon came from the Buffy Wiki, so shout out to them.


	5. Psychic Hell Portal Friend

When Neil and Matt get to the gym to grab their Exy racquets, Neil is surprised to see Dan’s beat up Honda sitting in the parking lot. He slides a look at Matt, who holds his hands up in an exaggerated shrug. 

“I almost _died_ today,” Matt says. “I might have asked her to come meet us here so I could have some cuddles.”

Neil sighs. He has a sudden understanding of how Wymack must feel daily. “You’re going to tell her everything aren’t you?”

Matt’s eyes go huge. “I always tell her everything. Honesty is the basis of a healthy relationship.” He sounds so earnest that Neil just sighs again. 

On one hand, the more people who know, the more people he has to watch out for. Not to mention that Neil has spent his whole life holding his secrets close and not letting anyone near them. On the other, that was his mother’s policy, and look where it had gotten them. 

Besides, it seems clear that whatever is coming for him -- vampires, demons, the Hellmouth itself -- doesn’t really care who else it has to take out before it can get to Neil. If he hadn’t moved so fast, he’s sure the demon from earlier would have spit a mouthful of mucus directly onto Matt. Next time it might be Dan. 

If he stops lying to himself for half a second, he can admit that his teammates -- not just Matt -- are becoming his friends and he doesn’t want anything to happen to any of them. If that means telling them some of his secrets to keep them safe, then so be it.

“Fine,” he says. “But make it quick.”

Matt gives him a smile so wide that Neil could probably count all his teeth and throws open the driver side door. “I’ll be done by the time you get back.”

Neil takes his time retrieving their racquets from their lockers. By the time he gets back, the center console of Matt’s truck has been raised and Dan is sitting on the seat beside him. Neil doesn’t know why he’s surprised, he should have seen that coming. He considers, again, and then climbs in beside her and closes the door. 

“I didn’t get your racquet,” he says to her, because he doesn’t know what else to say after everything Matt just told her. 

She just grins at him and bumps their shoulders together. “It’s cool, I’ll watch. It’s not like watching Matt practice is a hardship.” She says this with a leer and an eyebrow wiggle so ridiculous that Neil can’t help the smile tugging at one side of his mouth. 

He thinks he likes having friends. 

Matt parks his truck at a gas station across from one of the newer cemeteries and they all pile out. There are no huge raised gravestones at this one, just a field of flat, shiny markers with little vases of flowers scattered around. It’s not full, which means there’s a whole section that’s just empty grass for them to practice on. They can’t play Exy for real on grass, so Neil didn’t bring a ball, but they can run through plays and practice drills. 

Wymack is leaning against the gate to the cemetery. His eyes narrow when he sees that Neil isn’t alone. “I didn’t know this was a party,” he says. “What the hell are they doing here?”

“A demon almost _killed_ me,” Matt says. “It was going to paralyze me and _eat_ me.”

Neil just looks at Wymack and shrugs. “We thought we’d get some practice in.”

Wymack looks between them a few times, visibly weighing his options, then opens the gate and waves them all in. “Tell me about this demon,” he says.

\----

There are no vampires that night, much to Matt’s disappointment. They tell Wymack everything and he nods and grunts about “the goddamn Hellmouth”. Then they play Exy. Dan coaches them through drills and Wymack points out their shortcomings.

It’s the best patrol Neil has been on yet. 

He convinces Matt to drop him off at the school with Dan, puts up the racquets, and jogs home. He jumps the fence and is halfway across the yard when a figure emerges from the shadows. Neil reaches for his stake automatically and glances around the otherwise empty backyard. If he’s going to have a fight back here, he has to do it quietly. 

“Calm down, slayer,” a familiar voice says. Andrew takes another step forward, into the moonlight, and Neil feels a rush of relief. Better the devil you know, and so on.

“That's it,” Neil mutters. He shoves the stake back into his bag. “I’m moving tomorrow.”

Andrew gives Neil a look that suggests Neil is lacking in brain cells and says, “Why would you do that? You must consider this your home because I can’t get inside.”

Neil thinks of his binder and how it contains his whole life and all of his secrets. He feels a curl of panic in his gut and inches his hand back towards his bag, where his stake is still sticking out haphazardly. Suddenly, he’s incredibly grateful for whatever twist in supernatural law won’t allow vampires into human residences without a clear invitation. 

“You tried to get inside?” he asks, carefully keeping his voice level.

Andrew stares at him, looking utterly bored by the whole thing. All he says is, “Of course.” Like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

And then, before Neil can figure out how to respond to that, Andrew holds a slim plastic bag out to him and says, “Here. You need this.”

Neil makes no move to take it, but Andrew doesn’t drop his arm. He just looks at Neil -- the blank expression on his face unchanged -- and waits. 

The moment stretches between them. Neil finds himself meeting Andrew’s eyes, searching out the flecks of gold he remembers from the club. They aren’t standing close enough, and it’s so dark that all he can see is the glint of hazel. Finally, he takes the bag. 

Andrew drops his arm, but otherwise doesn’t move. Neil takes the hint and opens the bag slowly. He’s half expecting it to be a gun. Which, to be fair, would probably be useful eventually. Instead, it’s a white box with a picture of a phone on it. 

“You got me a phone?” he asks. He tilts his head at Andrew, trying to read something -- anything -- in his expression. The only thing he’s getting is _you’re an idiot_.

“I heard about the demon at the school,” Andrew says. “You should be more careful.”

Nel raises one eyebrow. There’s a spark of something in his chest that he can’t identify. Annoyance, maybe. “More careful? It’s not like I summoned it. Wait, are you having me followed?”

“No,” Andrew replies. “But I’m considering it.”

“I don’t need another babysitter.” Neil slides the handle of the bag down over his wrist and crosses his arms. Andrew’s gaze is locked on him so intently that he feels like Andrew can see right through him. It’s unnerving.

“The Watcher doesn’t count,” Andrew scoffs. “His loyalty is to the council, not to you.”

Neil isn’t sure he agrees with that. Wymack was assigned to him, sure, but he clearly cares. In his own gruff way. He doesn’t just care about Neil, either, he cares about the team. He was there for a whole year before Neil showed up and several members of the team seem to view him as a father figure. Dan, especially. Neil doubts that Wymack is anywhere near good enough an actor to fake it. 

It doesn’t seem worth arguing about, not with Andrew. So instead Neil says, “How did you know about the demon if you aren’t having me followed?”

“It’s my Hellmouth,” Andrew says. “I know everything.”

“Great.” Neil matches Andrew’s tone. Dismissive with a thread of impatience. “Then tell your psychic Hell-portal friend to leave me the fuck alone. I have enough problems without demons trying to paralyze me in the parking lot.”

The edges of Andrew’s mouth curl down, almost like a frown. Almost. “Use the phone,” he says. He looks like he’s about to say something else, but instead he gives Neil one last glare and melts back into the darkness along the fenceline. 

Neil is left standing in the empty yard, holding a phone he didn’t ask for and utterly confused.

\----

He checks all of his possessions carefully when he gets inside, but nothing looks disturbed. That eases the tension in his stomach enough for him to sit on the edge of his cot and open the box containing a shiny black iPhone. He turns it over in his hands, careful not to smudge the pristine glass front with his fingerprints. There are several buttons and a switch, but none of them have the little circle-with-a-dash power sign that he’s used to from the computers at school and the shitty burner phones his mom bought. He looks it over again, then starts pressing the buttons one at a time until finally the screen lights up and a white apple appears.

Luckily, the phone is much more intuitive once it’s turned on. He taps on the icons one at a time, and isn’t surprised to see there are already contacts added. One of them says “Andrew” with a tiny vampire face beside it. The other says “Nicky” followed by a heart, a winking face, and, for some reason, an eggplant.

Neil taps on Andrew’s name, and then on the speech bubble icon that says “message”. A blank text message box pops up. He considers for a second, then carefully types in “Thanks for the phone” and taps the little blue arrow that he’s assuming is a send button. 

The message appears in blue on his screen and he stares at it. He’s not sure what he’s expecting, but a moment later three dots appear on the lower left side of the screen. After a second, they vanish, only to reappear, vanish again, and reappear one more time before the words “You’re welcome” come through. 

Neil feels the smallest flicker of something warm under his ribs, and he can’t help it if he’s smiling the tiniest bit as he carefully puts the phone under his cot, where it’s safe, and curls up to sleep.


	6. I'm Not Amish

At lunch on Monday, Neil puts his new phone carefully face-up on the table. He’s had it in his pocket all morning, but he keeps worrying that it’s going to get scratched. Allison notices it immediately. 

“You got a phone,” she says, delighted. “I thought you weren’t allowed to have one.”

Neil shrugs at her, as casually as possible. “My mom changed her mind.”

“Huh.” Seth looks up from his own phone. “So you aren’t some kind of Amish runaway.”

Neil looks at him in surprise. Seth speaks to him occasionally at practice, since they both play the same position. Other than that, Neil can count on one hand the number of times that Seth has acknowledged his existence. “No,” he says. “I’m not Amish.”

“Who would use their Rumspringa to hang out in Columbia and go to school?” Matt asks. “I’d use mine to party in Vegas.”

“Vegas?” Allison says. She wrinkles her nose in distaste. “Europe, Matthew. Party in Europe. Ibiza, Paris, Milan. That’s how you spend a Rumspringa.” She looks at Seth. “Right, babe?”

“Whatever you want,” Seth says. Then they start kissing. 

“Get a room,” Dan mutters from Allison’s other side. Seth flips her off behind Allison’s back. Dan just rolls her eyes and reaches for Neil’s phone. “Can I put our numbers in? Also, you need a case. This thing is going to get destroyed.”

“Sure,” Neil says. Because why not. He assumes that part of having friends is also having their phone numbers. He watches her for a second, as she types in names and phone numbers, but Matt nudges him and Neil turns to him instead. 

“Who’s your favorite Exy team?” Matt asks. He shows his phone screen to Neil and it’s full of phone covers with the logos of every professional Exy team Neil has ever heard of. 

“Cincinnati,” Neil says. When he was about 13 he’d been waiting for his mom in a car on the top floor of a parking garage when he’d realized he was beside the Jackrabbit stadium, with its retractable roof open and light and noise spilling out into the night. He’d spent an hour watching the Exy game play out on the giant screens visible from where he was leaning over the edge of the garage railing. Cincinnati had won the game only a few minutes before his mom had come back and scolded him for being out of the safety of the car. They’d been his favorite team ever since. 

“How’s this?” Matt turns the screen around to show Neil a bright green case with the Cincinnati team logo, a white and yellow jackrabbit, in the center of it.

“Where am I supposed to buy it?” Neil asks. “I’ve seen those stands in the middle of malls.”

Matt just waves a dismissive hand and taps a few things on his phone. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I have money,” Neil insists. He doesn’t want his teammates -- new friends -- to think he’s a freeloader or a user or anything other than capable of taking care of himself.

Matt taps on his screen one more. “Whoops,” he says, sounding completely unapologetic. “Too late. It’ll be here tomorrow.”

Neil opens his mouth to object, but Dan cuts him off before he gets a chance. “Look over here,” she says. Then makes him be still while she holds the phone in front of his face a few times. “Okay, your face ID is on and all of our numbers are saved.” She slides the phone back across the table to Neil, then drops her voice and says “I’m assuming that Andrew is some kind of ‘work’ contact.” She punctuates this by quickly holding two fingers up in front of her mouth to indicate fangs. “But who’s Nicky?”

“Oh,” Neil says. He mentally flips through possible lies and finally goes with, “A friend.”

That gets Allison’s attention, and she pulls away from Seth to focus on Neil instead. “You have other friends?” she asks. “Do you like them more than us? The answer is very important.”

“No,” Neil says. Then, because lies are easiest when they’re mostly true, “I met him at Eden’s. Remember that guy you made me dance with?”

Allison looks at him in disbelief. “You got that guy’s _number_? And you didn’t _tell me_? Are you talking? Dating? I didn’t even know you actually liked guys. I didn’t know you liked _anyone_.”

“Um,” Neil says, floundering. Dating has never been an option for him. Being romantically interested in another person at all has never been an option for him. “I don’t like anyone. Or anything, I guess. I don’t--”

“You don’t swing?” Matt interjects. Neil shoots a grateful look his way. Matt just grins at him. “That’s cool. More time for you to spend with all of us.”

“Hm,” Dan says. She watches as Neil carefully pushes the phone back into his pocket. “Then maybe you should take that eggplant emoji off. It gives the wrong idea.”

Neil looks at her blankly. “What’s an emoji?”

\----

This time when Neil comes out of the gym after practice, Renee is sitting on the steps, twisting her hair into a complicated braid on top of her head. The rainbow pastel ends are gone, replaced with hot pink streaks.

Other than Seth, he talks to Renee the least. Not because she’s a dick, like Seth, but because he doesn’t trust her. She’s the picture of middle class suburbia, with her sweet smiles and the cross around her neck, but Neil recognizes something all too familiar behind the image she tries to project. It’s easy to change the exterior, but she can’t hide the glimpses of coldness he sometimes catches in her eyes. 

It makes her impossible to figure out, which means she can’t be trusted. It’s not personal. He’s seen the same look in his own eyes, and in Andrew’s, but Andrew is a vampire. As far as Neil can tell, Renee is 100% human. 

He looks at her, then turns and looks back at the doors to the gym. “I think Allison and Dan already left,” he says. 

“They did,” she says. “I was waiting for you.”

“Oh.” He looks at her, unsure what to say to that. He can’t think of any reason she might need to talk to him. They don’t play the same position and they don’t have any classes together. She doesn’t even eat lunch with them half the time. Allison says she runs a Christian women’s group that meets in the library three days a week during lunch, because of course she does.

She bounces to her feet and comes to stand beside him. She’s the only one on the team he doesn’t have to literally look up to. Even Dan is taller than him. Renee, though, is almost exactly his height. 

Neil isn’t sure what he’s expecting her to say next, but it definitely isn’t, “Andrew asked me to keep an eye on you.”

That’s exactly what she says, though. As if it’s the most normal thing in the world. Then, she smiles at him and waits while his brain struggles to process. “You know Andrew?” he finally asks.

“We have history.” Renee says. “Let me walk home with you and I’ll tell you everything.”

“Tell me everything first,” Neil counters. He isn’t taking someone he doesn’t trust anywhere near his house, no matter who sent them. 

Renee gives him another sunny smile. “If you want. It’s hot, though. Can we at least go back inside?”

“Fine,” Neil says. He follows her into the gym and they end up sitting in the first row of bleachers, watching the volleyball team set up a net across the court. Neil hates that they have to share the court with other teams, like those sports can even come close to Exy. 

Renee pulls her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around them. “When I was in middle school,” she says. “I joined a gang and they taught me how to use knives to keep my creepy neighbor from raping me, since my foster parents couldn’t be bothered. Eventually he tried anyway and I killed him.”

Neil finds himself at a loss again. He tries to imagine Renee, younger and desperate, wielding the same weapon his father used against him. It’s not difficult. But, still, “What does that have to do with Andrew?”

“I’m getting there,” she says. “They found me not guilty, of course, but my foster parents kicked me out. I was lucky enough to end up here, with this amazing family who wanted to adopt me and make me part of their lives. I went from having nothing, to having a mom and a sister who loved me. My adoptive mother helped me find faith, enrolled me in school and I started playing Exy.”

“But?” Neil asks. With stories like these, there’s always a but.

“But,” Renee echoes. “The summer after my freshman year, my beautiful, kind sister was murdered by a vampire and left in an alley like a piece of garbage. So I got out my knives and I went looking for revenge. It didn’t take long for Andrew to hear about the human girl out hunting the undead. I’m not a slayer. I had no business wandering around Columbia at night with weapons that would just piss the vampires off more.”

Neil finds himself nodding, the end of this story is easy enough to guess. “So he helped you.”

“Yes. He helped me.” This time, Renee’s smile is dangerous. “He showed me how to use a stake and held the vampire that killed my sister in place while I turned her to ash.”

“Shit,” Neil says. Because he can’t think of anything else. He feels like he just met Renee for the first time. Which, he guesses, is kind of true. He thinks about his mother bleeding out in the backseat of a car and knows that if he’d had the chance to drive a stake, or a knife, or anything at all into his father’s heart, he’d have taken it. He still would. 

Renee props her chin on her knees and watches him. “No one else knows about Andrew or the vampire. They all think my sister died in a random mugging. But you’re different. I knew it when you showed up. Then Andrew said you were a slayer and it started to make sense.” She tilts her head at him, watching him with sharp eyes. “I think there’s more to it, though.”

Neil shrugs. Just because she felt like spilling her life story doesn’t mean he’s inclined to do the same. “So Andrew asked you to babysit me.”

“Actually,” she says. “His exact words were ‘Your new friend Josten is the stupidest vampire slayer I’ve ever met. Don’t let him get killed in broad daylight.’”

Neil scowls at her. “I’m very smart. I moved like five times last year and I still made a 4 on the AP English Lit exam.”

Renee gives him another smile. The hard edge is gone and she’s all sweetness and light again. “I don’t think that’s the kind of stupid he means.”

\----

That night, on his first patrol without Wymack for backup, Neil shouldn’t be surprised when Andrew falls into step beside him as soon as he walks through the cemetery gates, but he is. He covers it by saying, “Are you this involved with every slayer who wanders across your Hellmouth, or am I special?”

“Neither,” Andrew replies. He stops in front of an eight-foot tall statue of an angel and props himself against the base of it. 

Neil leans beside him. The concrete is gritty and the edge of it bites into his legs even through his jeans. “Really?” he says. “Because I clearly recall you saying that I was interesting the first time we met.”

Andrew doesn’t look at him, so Neil watches as Andrew produces a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket and taps one out. He doesn’t say anything until after he lights it and there’s smoke drifting up into the darkness above them. Then, he says, “I was wrong. You aren’t interesting. You’re a nightmare.”

He sounds so mad about it that Neil laughs out loud. The sound bounces sharply through the empty graves before it fades away. When he turns his head again, Andrew is watching him, so Neil smiles at him. 

That was the wrong thing to do, apparently, because Andrew scowls and looks away. 

They stand in silence for a long time. Grasshoppers chirp around them and the breeze rustles through the trees lining the fence. The two fresh graves lay undisturbed and silent. He finds himself leaning closer to Andrew as he chain smokes, breathing in the scent. It reminds him of his mother. 

Three cigarettes later, Andrew says, “Tell me something true.”

Neil frowns at him. Truth is not something he gives away easily. “Like what?” he asks. 

Andrew drops his cigarette on the ground and stomps it out. The moon slides out from behind a cloud just as he turns to look at Neil, and the gold in his eyes is right there, just how Neil remembers it. 

Andrew says,”Where are your parents? Most high school kids have parents.”

“Oh.” Neil considers Andrew for a second. He settles on answering the question with a half-truth. “My mom died last summer and I haven’t seen my father since I was a kid. I’m 18, so there aren’t any government agencies rushing to house and feed me. Not that I want them to.”

Andrew studies him for a moment then nods sharply. Either he believes Neil or he’s accepting the lie. “Your turn,” he says.

“To ask you a question?” Neil asks. 

Andrew sighs. “Yes.” He doesn’t say _idiot_ , but Neil can tell it’s implied.

Neil looks around the cemetery and tries to figure out which direction to go with this. Should he ask about Andrew’s human life? Or about his vampire life? The possibilities are overwhelmingly endless, so Neil goes in a different direction all together.

“If I bring racquets tomorrow, will you play Exy with me?” There’s no way any of his opponents will ever be as fast and precise as a vampire, which should make them easy to beat in comparison.

“Junkie,” Andrew says. “That one-track mind is going to get you killed.”

“Maybe,” Neil replies. “Is that a yes.”

“Yes,” Andrew says, and lights another cigarette. 

They sit in silence until it’s obvious that no vampires are going to pop out of the ground. Then Andrew herds Neil into the passenger seat of his car and drives him home. When Neil gets inside, he pulls his phone out of his pocket and plugs it in to charge beside his cot. 

Before he can fall asleep, the screen lights up with a text from Andrew. “I’ll bring the racquets,” it says. “When I win, I get to ask another question.”

“Deal,” Neil texts back, and finds that he’s looking forward to it.


	7. I Hate You

The next couple of weeks pass relatively smoothly. Neil goes to school, practice, and games. Afterwards, he goes to eat with his friends, or walks home with Renee. Well, to the house his friends think is his home. It’s actually two blocks away. It looks lived in -- even though Neil has never seen anyone there -- while his actual house has an air of abandonment in the scraggly, unkempt yard and the mailbox listing to one side on the curb. He isn’t blind to the fact that Andrew is the only one who knows where he actually lives, but there’s not much he can do about that. It’s clear that Andrew will find him no matter where he is. This has been made obvious by Andrew’s appearance every night while Neil patrols. He never asks which cemeteries Neil will be visiting, and Neil never tells him. He’s just always there. 

They play Exy every night. Sometimes Neil brings a ball and tries to get it past Andrew on the narrow concrete pathways winding through the older cemeteries. Other nights, they play in the grass with only racquets and Andrew matches Neil’s every move step for step. Neil never wins, but he occasionally gets close. When he’s exhausted, they lie on the grass or lean against grave stones and trade truths. Andrew smokes, Neil breathes it in.

Sometimes Andrew watches Neil stake newly risen vampires. Or, one night, a demon that Neil thought was a tree until it tried to rip his throat out.

Neil finds out that Andrew turned his brother and Nicky -- who he is surprised to learn is their biological cousin, considering his dark hair and caramel skin bear no resemblance to the twins’ blond paleness. 

“My mother, if you could call her that, sold me to a German duke as a child,” Andrew says on a Wednesday night, after Neil asks how he became a vampire in the first place. “Turns out that a not-insignificant number of European nobility were actually vampires.”

Neil tries to keep the horror off his face. He learned quickly that Andrew doesn’t want his pity, he just wants honesty in return. Neil tries to give it to him, although he’s not sure how this vampire has gotten under his skin and started dragging Neil’s secrets out into the open night air. 

Neil just nods and waits. Either Andrew will continue, or he’ll decide that’s all the answer Neil is getting and change the subject. This time, it’s the former. 

“He did a lot of things to me,” Andrew says. He doesn’t specify, but Neil knows why men buy children. He doesn’t need it spelled out for him. Andrew’s voice is flat, lacking even the smallest hints of inflection that Neil has started to catch on to. “When I started to fight back, he turned me. He didn’t realize the mistake he’d made until I killed him.”

“Fuck him,” Neil says. And means it.

The brush of Andrew’s shoulder against his is the only acknowledgement his statement gets. Andrew says, ”So I went back to the village where my family lived and turned the people who mattered. I don’t know what happened to Aaron’s mother or Nicky’s parents. We came to America and left them all behind.”

With that, Andrew lights another cigarette and Neil knows he’s done talking. 

It’s Andrew’s turn to ask a question, but there’s no rush. They sit for a while, leaning against the side of a crumbling mausoleum. Eventually, Andrew says, “Tell me the truth about your father.”

So Neil does. 

He tells Andrew about how, when he was five, he saw his father hold a bound girl down by the hair and cut her until she bled out. He tells Andrew how he remembers the look in her eyes as the life drained out of her. He tells Andrew how he cried, so his father turned the knife on him instead. He tells Andrew how his father cut him open daily after that, until one night his mother took him and they ran. 

“I think,” he says. “That my slayer powers must have started to kick in after we left, because I always healed faster than my mom. Injuries that should have kept me down for days were scabbed over the next morning, gone by the day after that. I didn’t realize it at the time, but in retrospect I should have picked up on how I wasn’t adding any more scars to my collection.”

“Scars,” Andrew repeats. The edge in his voice is deadly.

Neil doesn’t ask if Andrew wants to see. He isn’t trying to make it part of the game. When he sits up straight and peels his shirt over his head, it’s only because he feels safe letting Andrew in just a little bit more. 

“Can I touch you?” Andrew says. His eyes are dark when he meets Neil’s gaze. This isn’t part of the game, either.

Neil knows that Andrew would drop it in an instant if he said no, so he doesn’t. He says yes.

The first touch of Andrew’s cool fingers against his skin sends a shiver down Neil’s spine. Andrew is gentle as he traces the clear outline of an iron on Neil’s shoulder, then skips down to lightly drag his fingertips over the knife scars that hatchmark Neil’s chest and ribs. Goosebumps trail in the wake of Andrew’s hand, and something in Neil’s stomach has gone tight and hot.

“There should be more,” he says. His voice comes out low, with a rough edge he doesn’t recognize. “Bullet holes and road rash and probably a bunch of shit I don’t even remember.”

Andrew’s hand has stopped moving. His fingers are still resting just above Neil’s hip. The air between them feels thick in a way that Neil can’t define. Before he can think too much about it, Andrew drops his arm and grabs Neil’s shirt, shoving it back into Neil’s hands. 

“Time to go home,” Andrew says. He gets to his feet abruptly and starts walking towards his car, leaving Neil scrambling behind him.

\----

Neil is still thinking about Andrew’s hands on his skin two days later. Neither of them had mentioned it the next night. They patrolled and played Exy and Neil staked a vampire. They did not exchange truths.

There’s an away game on Friday night. Neil climbs onto the bus with the rest of his team and claims a seat towards the back, across from Matt and Dan. He pulls out his phone and opens his text thread with Andrew. “Away game in Lexington,” he sends. “No patrol tonight.”

He gets a response quickly. “Don’t die.”

Which is ridiculous, because Neil is twice as safe on a school bus as he is in the middle of a graveyard waiting for vampires to show up. He sends back, “I’ll try,” and hopes Andrew can read the sarcasm. 

Neil knows there’s a vampire in the room as soon as he steps onto the court. The tingle at the base of his spine gets stronger as his team warms up. He throws the ball back and forth with Allison and hits a few practice shots at their goal, which Renee blocks easily, but he keeps half his attention on the crowd, trying to get a thread on where the vampire is standing. There’s so many people in the stands, coming and going, that it’s impossible to pin anything down. 

As they file off the court to get ready for the first half, Neil hears the Lexington coach tell Wymack that they have a last minute substitution in their starting line. He doesn’t think much of it until Dan meets the other captain in the middle of the court for the coin toss. Then he realizes. The vampire is the other team’s goalie.

He makes a freshman sitting at the end of the bench -- closest to the opposing goal -- switch seats with him so he can get a better look. The other team’s goalie is generally unassuming. Dark hair and fair skin, but nothing that screams _vampire_. Neil knows in his bones that he is one, though. He thinks he’d know it even without the tingle that has crawled all the way up to the back of his neck. 

The goalie is fast. He shuts out every single attempt at a score from Seth and their other starting striker --a junior girl who isn’t afraid to play dirty. He’s holding back, though. Enough that no one else will think he’s anything but an exceptionally talented human. Neil has played against Andrew enough to recognize a vampire who isn’t playing at their best. 

He doesn’t say anything to Wymack until halftime. There’s no point, they can’t exactly stop the game and accuse the other team of using a supernatural ringer to make sure they win. Besides, the rest of the team kind of sucks. Renee is holding their goal easily. 

At halftime, Neil pulls Dan and Wymack into a corner of the locker room and tells them about the goalie. Dan is immediately outraged. “That’s _cheating_ ,” she hisses. 

Wymack just looks confused. He says,”What self-respecting vampire chooses to relive high school?”

Neil can’t bring himself to be too annoyed about it. It’s more of a challenge than anything, he thinks. Plus, vampire or not, Lexington has yet to score a single point. Of course, neither has Columbia. 

“It’s fine,” he says. 

Dan turns to him. “If I make sure you get the ball, can you score on him?” Her brown eyes are sparking with anger. 

Neil smiles at her, and it feels feral. “Yes.”

With that, halftime is over and it’s time to get back on the court.

Neil doesn’t go for the score immediately. He feels it out, throwing balls he knows won’t make it past the vampire, but that _will_ let him get an idea of any weak spots. He’s never gotten a ball past Andrew, but this vampire lacks a little of Andrew’s speed and a lot of Andrew’s finesse. Younger, Neil decides. Not a fledgling, but not old enough to have realized his full potential. 

By the last fifteen minutes of the half, he thinks he has it nailed down. He stops beside Matt, then Dan, and gives them some quick instructions. Renee is still shutting out the rest of Lexington’s team so easily that Neil thinks she might look a little bored. 

Then, Neil catches a familiar flash of blond hair through the plexiglass walls surrounding the court. 

Andrew. 

Knowing Andrew is there makes Neil more determined. He focuses on getting into position while Matt keeps the other team busy, deflecting their shots against the plexiglass so they have to stay on top of their rebounds and can’t pay attention to Neil. 

He tosses the ball back and forth with Dan, until, finally, the backliner in front of him moves too far to the left and Neil has the perfect shot. He catches the ball on the ground and throws his preternatural speed into a spin. The ball releases from his racquet, bounces off the wall, and shoots directly between the vampire goalie’s feet before he can even move to stop it.

The goal lights up red. 

Neil hears Matt whoop behind him and the rest of the team cheers from the bench. On the other side of the court, the Lexington team is sitting in stunned silence. Neil doesn’t know how many of them know what their goalkeeper really is, but it’s obvious that none of them expected a ball to get past him tonight. Just to rub it in, Neil gives them a friendly wave. 

No one scores for the rest of the game, but it doesn’t matter. They win. When they line up to shake hands with the other team, the goalie flashes fangs at Neil. Neil bares his teeth in return. 

The rest of the team circles him as they leave the court, hugging him and slapping him on the back. Allison is more subdued, though. She grabs his arm before he can follow Matt and Seth into the locker room and pulls him to the side. 

“What the fuck?” she demands. “I didn’t even see the ball move.”

Neil looks around. They can’t have this conversation here, not with the rest of their teammates milling around and celebrating. “I'll tell you everything on the bus,” he says. “I promise.”

“Yeah. You will.” Allison gives him one last sharp look, then vanishes into the women’s locker room. 

Neil takes his gear off and packs it away while he waits for the locker room to clear out. Once he’s alone, he changes clothes and is about to catch up with the rest of his team on the bus when the door opens and Andrew comes in. 

“Hey,” Neil says. He still feels almost weightless from the adrenaline pumping through him. 

Andrew crosses the room and leans against the lockers in front of Neil. His arms are hanging loosely by his sides as Neil approaches, but when he gets within arm's reach Andrew holds a hand out. Neil takes it without a second thought and lets himself be drawn in until they’re almost pressed against each other. 

“Junkie,” Andew says. His eyes drop to Neil’s mouth and Neil’s breath catches in his chest. 

He feels like they’re about to tip over the edge of a precipice, when the door bangs open and Wymack stalks in, calling out, “Josten, get on the damn bus.”

He stops short and takes in the scene in front of him. Andrew drops Neil’s hand and steps to the side, putting himself between Neil and Wymack. 

“Coach,” he says. His tone suggests complete boredom, but Neil can see the tenseness in his shoulders. 

Wymack flicks his gaze between them, then says “I don’t have fucking time for this. Fraternize with the undead on your own time. Let’s go.”

He holds the door open and looks at Neil pointedly until he steps around Andrew. Andrew stops him with a finger on his wrist and Neil turns. 

“I hate you,” Andrew says.

Neil grins at him. “I know.”


	8. Gentleman Friend

Neil doesn’t have time to think about what just happened in the locker room, because Allison practically drags him to the back of the bus and pushes him down onto the bench in the last row. Seth follows them and tries to slide a hand around Allison’s hip to pull her into a seat with him, but she shoves his arm off. 

“Not now,” she says. “Go away.”

Seth frowns at her, then turns his glare on Neil. “What, he makes one goal and now you want on his dick?”

“Jesus Christ. Not everything is about someone’s dick.” Allison says. Her irritation is clear. 

“Fine,” Seth snaps. He turns and pushes his way back up the aisle of the bus to drop into a seat beside the junior striker. She looks thrilled to see him, and even happier when he drapes an arm around her and leans in close. 

Allison seems unphased. She sits next to Neil and turns her back to the aisle, creating a barrier between them and any other interruptions. 

“Now,” she says. “Tell me how you made that impossible fucking shot. I know you practice obsessively, but you can’t out-practice the laws of physics.”

Neil goes through his story for the third time. He tells her everything Matt and Dan know, all the way up to the vampire goalie at tonight’s game. He still does not mention Andrew or his family. 

“That’s intense,” Allison says when he’s done. She leans back next to him and looks out the window over Neil’s head. He assumes she needs some processing time, so he braces his knees against the back of the seat in front of them and pulls out his phone. He tells himself he isn’t disappointed at the lack of new texts from Andrew. He’s been lying for over a decade. There’s no reason to stop now. 

He opens his Exy news app instead and spends the next half an hour reading about the lineups for the upcoming college season. Columbia is close enough to Palmetto State that Neil thinks he could probably talk Matt into going to a game with him. He’s halfway through comparing the PSU schedule to Columbia’s, trying to find a date that works, when Allison starts to talk.

“If you’re going to be out there killing monsters like a badass, you really need to dress like one.” She tugs at the sleeve of his worn t-shirt and wrinkles her nose. “We can do so much better than this.”

He has the two outfits she bought him when they went to Eden’s Twilight at the beginning of the year, but the rest of Neil’s clothes came from the assortment of thrift stores his mom occasionally stopped at while they were on the road. Clothes have never mattered to Neil, but he thinks about Andrew -- with his expensive black shirts and designer jeans -- and says, “Yeah, okay.”

Allison beams at him. “Perfect.” She pulls at his sleeve one last time. “Wear one of the outfits I bought you before, please. I don’t want anyone to think you’re homeless.”

\----

The next day, Neil follows Allison into more stores than he can count. She holds things up in front of him, discards some, and makes him try on the rest. By the time they get back in her car, Neil is holding multiple bags full of clothes in one hand and a smoothie in the other. She refused to let him pay for any of it.

Before she starts the car, Allison pulls out her phone and types something out. A second later, Neil’s phone lights up with a new group text. “Bought Neil decent clothes. Eden’s tonight, y/n?”

She’s sent it to him, Matt, Dan, and Renee. The answers start coming in immediately. Everyone says yes. Neil sends a text to Andrew. “I’m coming to your club tonight with my friends. See you there?”

Andrew won’t see it for a few hours, thanks to his forced nocturnal schedule, so Neil puts his phone back in his pocket and listens to Allison sing along with the music blasting out of her car stereo. 

They all gather at Allison’s house that evening. It’s just as huge and expensive as Matt’s, but less comfortably furnished. Everything is beautiful, pristine, and untouchable. Neil is reminded of a museum. 

Allison’s bedroom is the only exception. There are clothes and shoes strewn everywhere and the wall above her bed is covered with pictures of her and her friends -- Neil included, which makes him smile. She digs through the bags and sends Neil off to her ensuite bathroom with an outfit to change into. 

By the time he comes back out, the rest of their friends are there. Renee is sitting on the bed, letting Allison and Dan fuss with her hair, and Matt is sprawled on the floor eating Doritos. Neil stands and watches them for a minute, feeling a warm glow in his chest. When he ended up in Columbia -- which he’d chosen at random on a map -- he never thought it would lead to this. He has friends who actually care about him and respect his boundaries. Not one of them has ever asked why he doesn’t change in front of anyone or pushed to be invited over to his house.

He sits on the floor beside Matt and they practice throwing chips into each other’s mouths until the girls are ready to go. Neil makes it almost every time, but Matt can apparently only aim with an Exy racquet, which leaves Allison bitching about orange dust and making Neil change shirts before they walk out the door.

\----

Eden’s is just as packed as Neil remembers it. They step in the door and he’s overwhelmed by the multi-colored lights swirling over his head and the thump of bass that he can feel in his bones. Dan immediately pulls Matt towards the tightly packed bodies on the dance floor, light highlighting flashes of skin and hair as they gyrate to the beat of the music.

Allison grabs Neil’s hand and starts leading the way towards an empty table. Renee splits off and heads towards the bar to pick up a tray of soda and water. They’ve made it halfway around the outer edges of the dance floor, weaving through kissing couples and groups of girls mugging for phone cameras, when Nicky materializes in front of them. 

“Welcome,” he says. He takes Allison’s hand and kisses the top of her fingers. She gives him a winning smile, all white teeth and blood red lipstick. She fits right in, Neil thinks, even if she doesn’t know that she’s talking to a vampire.

“I recognize you,” she purrs. “You’re Neil’s gentleman friend.”

“I am both a gentleman and Neil’s friend,” Nicky agrees. He tucks Allison’s hand into the crook of his arm and leads her and Neil towards a spiral staircase tucked into the corner. “We would be honored if you joined us in the VIP section tonight.”

Allison is eating up the attention as they climb the stairs and Nicky shows them to a table in a roped-off section of the balcony. Allison drops off her tiny black purse and kisses Nicky on both cheeks, much to his delight. “I’m going to go tell the others where to find us,” she says. “Why don’t the two of you talk for a minute.”

She gives Neil a knowing wink and walks away, hips swinging under her skintight dress. Neil considers going after her and trying to correct the assumptions she’s making about his and Nicky’s relationship, but he’s not sure it’s worth the effort. What does he care if she thinks Nicky is his ‘gentleman friend’? 

“She’s hot,” Nicky says. “If you like that sort of thing.”

Neil blinks at him. “What sort of thing?”

“Women,” Nicky says. He clearly spends too much time with Andrew, because he’s just as good at suggesting Neil might be missing important brain cells without actually saying it. 

“Oh.” Neil isn’t sure how to respond to that, so he asks, “Is Andrew here?”

“Of course.” Now Nicky is the one looking at him like they’re sharing a secret. “Who do you think reserved the table?”

Neil expects him to go and get Andrew, but instead Nicky slides into the booth and pats the table beside him expectantly. Neil looks around, but no one shows up to save him, so he sits down. 

Nicky scoots in closer and props his elbow in the table, then rests his chin on his hand and looks at Neil. “What about you? Are you into that sort of thing?”

“What sort of thing?” Neil asks. He only has half his attention on Nicky, the rest of his brain is focused on trying to find Andrew in the crowd beyond their roped-off area. 

Nicky sighs hard enough that Neil feels the gust of his breath against his cheek. “Women.”

“Right,” Neil says. He thinks Nicky might have just said that. “No.”

Before Nicky can ask more questions that Neil doesn’t want to answer, another man shows up at their table and Nicky immediately gets up. “Erik,” he coos, wrapping both arms around the man’s waist and batting his eyes up at him. “You found me. I promise I wasn’t being seduced by another man.” He’s speaking German, and Neil remembers what Andrew said about their country of origin.

The man, Erik, barely even glances at Neil. “Good to know,” he says in the same language. Neither of them seem to care if Neil can understand them or not. He can. He spent six months in Germany when he was 10 and had nothing better to do than learn the language, but he sees no reason to mention that. 

“Dance with me.” Nicky drops his arms from around Erik’s waist and threads a finger through his belt loop to pull him away from the table. Before he gets too far, he waves at Neil over his shoulder and calls in English, “I’m sure Andrew will find _you_ soon.”

Nicky leaves and none of Neil’s friends have returned, so he’s left blissfully alone at the table. He pulls out his phone, but there are no new texts and his Exy app hasn’t notified him of any important events, so he puts it back in his pocket. 

When he looks up again, Andrew is standing in front of him. Neil takes in the long-sleeved black shirt and carefully distressed jeans. Something isn’t right. He looks into the vampire’s face and realizes instantly. 

“You must be Aaron,” he says. 

“Huh.” Aaron puts his hands in the back pockets of his jeans and looks at Neil like he’s a particularly interesting science experiment. “Maybe my brother was wrong about you being an idiot.”

“He really has to stop telling people that,” Neil says mildly. “I’m going to develop a complex.”

Aaron sits down on the other side of the booth. Neil is grateful for the distance he keeps between them, considering that the last time he saw Aaron, he was mid-eating someone. “Think of it as a fond nickname,” Aaron says. “Now tell me how you could tell us apart.”

“I don’t know,” Neil says, after a long moment of trying to pick out any details in Aaron’s face that might give it away. He doesn’t find any. They really are identical. And yet, “You just feel different. Like, your vibe, or aura, or whatever.” He waves a hand in the air. “You’re just _not_ Andrew.”

“Helpful,” Aaron says dryly. 

Neil shrugs. Aaron asked a question and Neil answered it. He wasn’t trying to be helpful. 

Just then, Renee appears and sets down a tray of drinks. “That took forever,” she says. “Oh, hey Andrew.”

“Aaron,” Neil and Aaron say in unison.

\----

Neil leaves Renee and Aaron at the table and escapes to the bathroom. When he emerges back into the club, the real Andrew is standing right there, leaning against a wall. He feels familiar to Neil’s slayer instincts, Neil realizes. Warm. Whereas Aaron was colder, more foreign.

Neil leans beside him, close enough that their hips brush against each other. “Your brother is walking around impersonating you,” he says. “Might want to keep an eye on that.”

Andrew raises one eyebrow. It’s an impressive skill and Neil spends a second wondering if he practices it in a mirror. “Did he fool you?” Andrew asks.

Neil shakes his head. “Not even a little.”

“Good,” Andrew says. “Come see my office.”

It turns out that Andrew’s office is hidden behind a normal-looking section of wall at the back of the club. He presses on the wall a few times, in a pattern Neil can’t quite follow, and the brick slides away. They step inside and the wall moves back into place behind them, revealing a bookcase. 

Andrew’s office is everything Neil expected his house to be. Three of the walls are painted black, but the far wall is covered in wallpaper with a complicated pattern of gold filigree running across it. The bookcase behind them is solid wood, and also painted black. A few decorative skulls are scattered between the rows of leather bound books. The furniture is sparse, but well-made and obviously expensive. There are a couple of deep arm chairs, upholstered in black velvet and positioned across from a massive desk stained a dark espresso color. The chandelier hanging from the center of the ceiling and the plush gray rug underfoot save it from being a depressing hole of darkness. 

“Wow.” Neil turns in a circle, taking it all in. “You really stayed on brand here, didn’t you?”

“It was Nicky’s idea,” Andrew says dismissively. He crosses the room to sink into the black leather wingback chair stationed behind his desk. Neil follows and perches on the edge of the desk in front of him. 

“I’m taking a turn,” he says.

Andrew doesn’t respond, but he gestures at Neil in a clear sign to go ahead. 

“Do you kill people?” Neil asks bluntly. He’s been thinking about it ever since Aaron sat down at the table upstairs. He vividly remembers the blood around Aaron’s mouth that night in the park and the girl he’d had pinned up against a tree.

“Not anymore,” Andrew answers. He doesn’t appear to be bothered by the question. “It’s messy and bodies pile up fast. Most sane vampires subsist on bagged blood these days. Which isn’t to say they don’t take a sip or two here and there. Not all humans are unwilling.”

He looks at Neil when he says the last part, and Neil feels his throat go dry. He should be horrified by the idea. He isn’t. It’s an uncomfortable realization that he pushes away as soon as he has it. Maybe Nicky isn’t the only one spending too much time around Andrew.

“Is that what Aaron was doing that night in the park?” he asks. “Taking a sip from a willing human?”

“Oh, that?” Andrew sounds genuinely surprised. “Katelyn isn’t human. Aaron turned her a decade ago. That’s just their version of a weird sex game.” He makes a face when he says it, like the idea of his brother having sex is the worst thing he’s said so far.

Neil stares at him. That wasn’t even close to the answer he was expecting. Not even in the same ballpark. Or Exy court. “He _turned_ her?”

“Well, yes,” Andrew says. “Humans don’t live forever.” 

Then, before Neil can figure out a response to that, Andrew asks, “Why do you dye your hair and wear contacts?”

“What?” Neil touches his hair. “How did you know?” He’d touched his roots up last weekend, so he knows there’s no hint of his natural red color underneath the dull brown. 

“I’m a vampire,” Andrew says flatly. “Answer the question.”

Neil shrugs, suddenly self-conscious, and tugs his fingers through the hair in question. “I look like my father.”

Andrew studies his face for a second, then nods and says, “Too recognizable.”

“Too recognizable,” Neil agrees, relieved that Andrew doesn’t require further explanation.

Neil is about to change the subject to the game the night before and what the fuck the other team was doing with a vampire goalie, when his phone starts vibrating in his pocket. 

He pulls it out to see the screen lighting up with one text after another from Matt. He unlocks the screen and opens his messages. The first words he sees make his stomach turn and his blood freeze in his veins. 

“Where are you??? Seth is dead.”


	9. Vampire Protection Program

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shit is getting real, y'all.

Neil gets outside to find his friends sitting on the curb in front of Eden’s. Allison looks shell-shocked where she’s leaning against Renee’s shoulder. Dan is sitting on her other side, holding one of Allison’s hands and smoothing her hair back from her forehead. Allison is clutching her phone in her other hand and Neil can see the slight tremor from her hand shaking. She isn’t crying, her makeup is still perfect, but her eyes look dead.

Matt jumps up when he sees Neil and rushes over to him, only to have Andrew put himself between them. 

Matt stops short. His eyes dart between Andrew and Neil before he visibly decides on a priority and addresses Neil over Andrew’s head. “Are you okay? Wymack called and we couldn’t find you and then you weren’t answering your texts.”

“I’m fine,’ Neil says. He touches Andrew’s arm, trying to signal that it’s really okay, these people aren’t going to hurt him, and steps up beside him. “What happened?”

Behind Matt, Neil sees Aaron and Nicky appear out of nowhere. Allison and Dan both jump. Renee just looks up and calmly takes the bottles of water Nicky is holding out to her. There’s a vaguely familiar girl with auburn hair clutching Aaron’s hand. Katelyn, Neil assumes. 

“They found him outside the school,” Matt is saying. He sounds like he’s on the edge of panicking. “Wymack said his throat was torn out. He told us to watch out for vampires.”

“Okay,” Neil says. His mind is racing. He needs a minute to think. “We have to get out of here.” He feels exposed and his instinct is to run, hide, make a plan. Except it’s not just about him anymore. He has friends and he knows he would do almost anything to protect them.

He turns to Andrew, helplessly. Andrew holds out a set of keys and says, “Get in my car.”

Neil does not take them. “I’m not just leaving my friends.”

Andrew levels him with a glare, which Neil meets head-on. They stare at each other in silence for a tense moment. Finally, Andrew looks away and snaps, “Nicky, take the rest of them to the Watcher.” He looks back at Neil. “Happy?”

Neil’s mind is racing. He is clearly the target here, and being with his friends puts the target directly on them, as well. Isn’t it already on them, though? Seth wasn’t even his friend. What would he do if Allison was next? 

He’s still trying to mentally work his way through the onslaught of guilt and indecision, when Renee gets up off the curb and comes to stand on Andrew’s other side. “I’ll make sure they’re okay,” she says. “I promise.”

When Neil meets her gaze, it’s cold and calculating. Dangerous. He nods. “Okay.”

“Go,” Andrew says. He presses the keys into Neil’s hand. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

Neil looks at Matt’s confused face, then at where Allison and Dan are sitting on the curb. He takes the keys and goes.

Behind him, he hears Matt say, “Wait, are these guys _vampires_?”

Neil climbs into the passenger seat of Andrew’s cars and doubles over, bracing his head between his knees. He breathes in and out slowly, feeling his chest expand and contract, then starts counting to ten in every language he knows. He’s gone through French, German, and Spanish and has resorted to English when Andrew slides into the driver’s seat. 

Neil sits up. “Where are we going?” he asks. 

“I’m taking you home with me,” Andrew says. “You’re losing it.”

“They killed him because of me.” The guilt pitting Neil’s stomach sinks deeper. He thinks about Allison kissing Seth in the cafeteria, then about her vacant expression on the curb, and wants to throw up. “This is my fault.”

“No.” Andrew turns to him. His eyes are intense when they lock onto Neil’s. “This is not your fault. This happened because Riko is a psychopath who should have been put down centuries ago.”

With that, he starts the car and peels out of the parking lot.

\----

Katelyn is in the kitchen when Neil follows Andrew inside. “Sit,” she says, and points at the breakfast nook tucked into a bay window. Neil slides onto the padded bench obediently. Andrew gives him a look that indicates he would like for Neil to _not move_ and then disappears through the doorway leading to the living room.

“How did you get here so fast?” Neil asks. Not only is she _there_ , but she has a tea kettle on the stove and a mug waiting on the counter, the white string from a tea bag dangling over the side. “Vampires drink tea?”

“No, I got it for you.” The tea kettle starts to whistle just then, high and shrill. Neil winces. Katelyn ignores the sound and starts pouring water in the mug. “And we ran,” she says. “It only takes like, ninety seconds to get here from Eden’s. Your boyfriend just likes his fancy car.”

“My what?” he says, alarmed. Which is when Neil sees a human-sized blur and suddenly Nicky is standing next to Katelyn. Somewhere in the background, Neil hears the front door slam shut.

“I left your friends with the Watcher,” he says, dropping down onto the bench beside Neil. “The tall one said to give you this.” Then Nicky throws both arms around Neil and gives him a rib-crushing bear hug. 

“Thanks,” Neil gasps, when Nicky releases him. He takes a deep breath and thinks he feels something pop back into place. 

Katelyn sits down across from them and nudges the mug across the table to Neil. He takes a slow sip and feels it burn comfortingly down this throat. “Did you know,” she says to Nicky. “That the first time I met our slayer here, he left me in a park to be murdered by a vampire?”

“ _Neil_ ,” Nicky gasps. He clutches both hands over his heart. “You _didn’t_.”

“To be fair,” Neil says. “You weren’t actually being murdered.”

Katelyn grins at him. “Oh, by all means,” she says gleefully. “Let’s always give blood-covered men in parks the benefit of the doubt.”

Neil laughs out loud and the weight in his stomach eases. “Touché.”

“Anyway,” Katelyn says warmly. “That’s when I knew I liked you.”

Neil drinks his tea and listens to Katelyn and Nicky banter. He thinks they might be doing it for his benefit, and it works. By the time Andrew appears in the doorway and waves Neil over, he feels like he can breathe again. 

In the living room, Kevin is sprawled across the couch in the same position as the last time Neil was here, he’s holding an almost identical Exy magazine. Neil thinks he might even be wearing the same shirt.

“Another fun fact,” Nicky says from Neil’s elbow. “Kevin is currently the only member of the vampire protection program.”

Kevin shoots Nicky a glare and a middle finger, then says to Neil, “I’m going to teach you how to fight like a vampire.”

“Dirty,” Nicky clarifies. “He’s going to teach you how to fight dirty.”

Andrew is clearly done with all of this. “Come on,” he says, and starts up the stairs. Neil doesn’t ask questions. He just follows. They go upstairs, down a hall, and into a bedroom. There’s an antique four poster bed on one wall and an elegant chest of drawers on another. Neil assumes all of the drawers, as well as the opposite closet, are stuffed full of black clothing. Andrew throws open a window and waits while Neil climbs out onto the slope of the roof.

They sit underneath the window in silence while Andrew smokes. Neil leans in close and inhales deeply, letting the scent fill his lungs. When the cigarette burns down to the filter, Andrew stubs it out, then turns to Neil. The streetlight beside the house makes the gold in his eyes glow. 

“I want to kiss you,” he says. “Yes or no?”

Neil’s heart skips a beat. He’s only ever kissed one person, a nameless faceless girl somewhere in Canada. His mother had made sure he regretted it. 

He doesn’t think it would be possible for him to regret Andrew. 

“Yes,” he says.

Andrew’s lips are cool and smooth when they touch Neil’s, in sharp contrast to the heat igniting under Neil’s skin. He gasps into it, pushing closer as Andrew steals the air from his lungs. His hands come up, but he doesn’t know what to do with them, so he hovers them over Andrew’s arms until Andrew catches his wrists and directs Neil’s fingers into his hair.

Neil sinks his hands into Andrew’s thick, blond curls, twisting his fingers to pull Andrew in. Andrew’s mouth is warming quickly and the slide of his tongue against Neil’s is electric. Andrew’s hands slip under the edge of Neil’s shirt, fingertips pressing firmly into Neil’s bare skin. He feels like he’s falling apart under Andrew’s touch.

They kiss until Neil’s lips are numb and he’s panting restlessly into Andrew’s mouth. He pulls back when he feels like he’s going to burn up from the outside in and sucks in a lungful of fresh night air.

He lets it out in a rush and ducks down to press his forehead to Andrew’s shoulder, willing his heartbeat to level out. He didn’t know kissing could be like that. He didn’t know _anything_ could be like that.

“You need to sleep,” Andrew says. He threads his fingers through Neil’s hair and tips his head back so Andrew can see his face. “You look like shit.”

Neil can’t help the laugh that bubbles up from his chest. “Thanks,” he says. “I hate you, too.”

He lets Andrew pull him to his feet and shuffle him back through the window. Andrew points at the bed. “Sleep,” he repeats. Then he leaves and Neil is alone.

He kicks off his jeans and climbs into the bed. He can’t remember the last time he slept on an actual mattress. He falls asleep almost instantly, his face buried in a pillow that smells like Andrew.


	10. I'm Fine

When Neil wakes up, the house is silent and dark. There are black-out shades drawn tightly over the heavily tinted windows. Andrew is beside him, close but not touching. He’s on his side, facing Neil and preternaturally still. Neil can barely pick out the features of his face. He lies there for a long time, letting his eyes adjust to the dim light and thinking about kissing Andrew on the roof. 

Eventually, his stomach growls, so he drags himself out of bed and puts his jeans back on. His phone is plugged in on top of the dresser, the screen full of missed calls and messages from Wymack.

He finds a bathroom and then wanders downstairs, taking in the rest of the house as he goes. There’s slightly more light outside of Andrew’s bedroom, filtering in around the edges of thick curtains. He notices several more doors indicating bedrooms. Four in total, he thinks, including Andrew’s. The walls are mostly bare. There are no photos or mementos. When he gets to the kitchen, someone has left a box of Pop-tarts next to a shiny toaster that appears to have never been used. Katelyn, Neil assumes. 

Flipping on the overhead light, Neil puts two Pop-tarts in the toaster and opens the fridge. There’s some milk that Katelyn used in his tea last night, but the rest of the shelves are bare. There’s a drawer at the bottom that he pulls out to find a pile of neatly labeled bags of blood. Next, he looks in the freezer, which contains nothing but bottles of vodka. There doesn't seem to be anything else fit for human consumption, so he retrieves the tea mug from the sink, pours himself some milk, and grabs his food from the toaster. Then he sits down at the table and calls Wymack. 

“You know,” Wymack says when he answers, before Neil can even say hello. “That night you left the cemetery with Andrew, I assumed you were dead. It was disappointing, because I like you and you showed a lot of promise, but I couldn’t help that you were fucking dumb enough to go galivanting off with vampires.”

Neil breaks the crusts off his Pop-tart and eats them slowly. He doesn’t say anything. He’s not sure Wymack would even hear it.

“And _now_ , Wymack continues. “One of my strikers is dead and half my team is asleep in my living room, but the one I was actually hired to keep an eye on has -- once again -- fucked off with a member of the very species he’s supposed to be slaying.”

Neil’s first instinct is to tell Wymack to calm down, but he thinks that might cause a brain aneurysm, so instead he says, “I wanted them to be safe. They’re safer if they aren’t around me.”

“Josten,” Wymack says, but Neil cuts him off immediately.

“I’m fine,” he insists. “Make sure nothing happens to them.”

Then he hangs up and turns his phone off. This is his problem. If anyone else has to die, it should be Neil. Coming to Columbia has given him people to care about and he has no problem sacrificing himself to protect them.

\----

Neil paces the house for a while, feeling antsy and trapped. The clothes Allison bought him are too constricting to run in, so he goes back to Andrew’s bedroom and quietly opens drawers -- just as he suspected, they are all piled with neatly stacked black clothing -- until he finds a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt that doesn’t look like it used to have a three digit price tag on it.

He changes and goes out the front door, grateful for the designer sneakers Allison picked out for him as he starts to jog away from the house. He weaves his way through the streets around Andrew’s house and runs until it’s almost dusk and he feels more centered. 

When he gets back to the house, the sun is just starting to slip behind the rooftops on the horizon. Andrew is standing in the middle of the living room, holding Neil’s powered-off phone in one hand. His expression is carefully schooled into blankness, but the murderous look in his eyes is a whole different story. 

Behind him, Kevin is arranged in his customary position on the couch. Neil can hear the other vampires moving around upstairs, 

“What,” Andrew says. “The fuck?”

Neil skirts around him and heads towards the kitchen. “I went running,” he throws over his shoulder. “I’m fine.”

Andrew sighs impressively hard for someone who doesn’t need to breathe and follows Neil. He doesn’t say anything while Neil opens cabinets until he finds a small collection of shot glasses and plastic cups, takes one, and fills it with water from the filter on the refrigerator.

“Oh, hey. I didn’t think this would be connected,” he says. If he only does it to get another sigh out of Andrew, well, who needs to know?

“Are you wearing my _clothes_ ,” Andrew asks. 

Neil turns to him. “I couldn’t run in those jeans,” he says. “Sorry I sweated all over them.”

“It’s fine,” Andrew says. He sounds slightly strangled. “But you do understand the concept of a safe house, right? It’s where you stay _inside_ of the house to be safe.”

“It’s really easy,” Kevin calls from the other room. “I can teach you if you want.”

“It’s not dark yet,” Neil points out. “Vampires can’t get to me during the day.”

“I hate you,” Andrew says. Then he turns around and leaves the room. 

Neil drinks his water, refills the cup, and goes to sit on the other end of the sectional from Kevin, who does not look up from today’s Exy magazine when he says, “It’s not just vampires you have to look out for. Riko will send humans after you, too. Not to mention demons.”

Neil thinks about the Fyarl demon in the school parking lot, and sighs. “I needed to clear my head. Nothing happened.”

“He’ll get over it,” Kevin says and turns the page. 

Neil finishes the water and goes upstairs, where he finds Andrew smoking on the roof. When Neil climbs out the window to sit beside him, Andrew takes the cigarette out of his mouth and hands it to Neil without speaking, then lights another one for himself. Neil holds the cigarette in his fingers, watching the tip glow red, and breathes it in. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. After a second, Andrew glances at him, so he keeps talking. “I just had to get out. I didn’t mean to worry you.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Andrew says. His shoulders relax, though, and he sounds less like he wants to stab something when he says, “At least take your phone next time.”

“I will,” Neil promises. 

They sit on the roof until their cigarettes burn out, then Andrew turns to Neil and says, “Come on, it’s time for Kevin to kick your ass.”

Kevin, it turns out, is merciless. “The Moriyamas have no concept of a fair fight,” he tells Neil. “Literally all they care about is winning.”

Then, he sucker punches Neil in the stomach. 

Andrew sits on the back steps and watches them spar, chain smoking and occasionally calling out instructions. At some point, Katelyn comes out to say the rest of them are going to Eden’s and gives Neil a cheerful thumbs up. He pauses to return it, only to have Kevin kick his feet out from under him. He hits the ground hard enough to knock the air out of him.

“Pay attention,” Kevin snarls. He grabs Neil’s arm and hauls him to his feet. “This is a lot of effort to go to if you’re just going to die anyway.”

They spar until Neil goes down and is too exhausted to get up. He lies on the grass and looks up at Kevin. “You win,” he says.

“Obviously,” Kevin replies. He leaves Neil on the ground and goes back into the house, stopping to say something to Andrew that Neil can’t hear. 

Andrew is still sitting on the stairs when Neil drags himself to his feet and goes to flop down beside him. “What’s his deal?” Neil asks. 

“This counts as a turn,” Andrew says. At Neil’s nod, he continues, “As far as we know, the Moriyamas think he’s dead. We’re not in any rush to prove them otherwise.”

Neil considers that. “You said he made Riko angry so Riko turned him. Why not just kill him for sure?”

“Too easy,” Andrew says. “The vampires under Riko’s control were more intimidated by Kevin than him and Riko’s fragile ego couldn’t handle it. Forcing Kevin into being turned and then throwing him out to die alone added insult to injury and made him an example.”

“How did he end up here?” Neil asks. 

“He won’t really say.” Andrew shrugs. “He showed up outside Eden’s about a year ago and looked half dead, so we brought him here. You know the rest.”

“Vampire protection program?” Neil says, amused.

“Sure,” Andrew says. Then, “Go take a shower. You smell.”

\----

Someone has left another set of clothes on the bathroom counter, so Neil showers off all the sweat and pulls them on. He goes to Andrew’s bedroom and finds Andrew on the bed, reading a book. The title appears to be written in Russian.

“How many languages do you speak?” he asks, climbing on the bed and sitting cross-legged next to Andrew’s legs. 

“A lot,” Andrew says. He pauses for a second, then puts his book down and lists them off on his fingers. “German, French, Spanish, Russian, Italian, English. Six, I guess.”

“Four,” Neil says in return, before Andrew asks. “French, German, Spanish, English. Can you teach me Russian?”

“If you want.” Andrew sits up across from Neil, braced on his knees so that Neil has to look up into his face. “Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Neil says. The word is barely out of his mouth before Andrew’s hands are on his shoulders, nudging him back against the pillows. Neil stretches underneath him, flattening the palms of his hands against the headboard. Andrew crawls on him, eyes dark as he works one knee between Neil’s legs and settles on top of him. One of his hands tangles in Neil’s hair, tilting his head where Andrew wants it and Neil thinks that he’s never wanted anything as much as he wants Andrew’s mouth on his right this second. 

Then Andrew kisses him and he can’t think about anything. He feels like he’s only being held together by the weight of Andrew’s body pressing him down into the mattress as Andrew takes him apart at the seams. 

Afterwards, they curl up side by side on the bed, so close together that their knees are touching.

“My turn,” Andrew says. He waits for Neil to agree, then asks, “How did your mother die?”

“One of my father’s people killed her,” Neil says. He’s been expecting this question since the night Andrew asked about his father. “They caught up with us in Seattle and beat her with a pipe until I could get her away. I barely made it out alive. I drove to California and tried to help her, tried to _do_ something, but it was too late.”

He gets lost for a second, in the memories of salt water and smoke, until Andrew’s thumb brushes over his face, bringing him back to the present. “I burned her body in the car,” Neil says quietly. “Then I buried her bones in the ocean.”

“You did what you had to do,” Andrew says. He slides his hand up Neil’s arm and around to his back, pressing between his shoulder blades until Neil curls in closer and buries his face in Andrew’s neck. 

“I have to go to school tomorrow,” Neil mumbles. 

“The fuck you do,” Andrew says.

Neil pulls away to frown at Andrew. “But I have practice.” 

“Junkie,” Andrew says. He pushes Neil’s head back down, and Neil smiles against his skin.


	11. Love Is Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This got kinda porny, guys. Don't know how that happened.

Neil goes to school the next day. 

He wakes up to the blast of a horn outside of Andrew’s house and stumbles downstairs to find Renee sitting in the driveway behind the wheel of a pale blue Volkswagen Beetle. She rolls down the window and holds a cardboard cup out where Neil can see it. “I brought coffee,” she says. 

Ten minutes later, Neil has appropriated some more of Andrew’s clothes and is drinking fancy caramel coffee in the passenger seat. Something happy and poppy is playing on the radio, and Renee is humming along. She seems perfectly content to wait until Neil is ready to talk.

Eventually he asks, “How is everything?” Because he can’t bring himself to say _does everyone hate me?_

“Hard,” Renee says. “Weird.” They come to a stop at a red light and she looks over at Neil. “But we all know this isn’t your fault. 

Neil isn’t sure he believes that. He doesn’t think there’s any way this isn’t his fault, no matter what Andrew and Kevin say about Riko. “It is,” he says. “If I never came to Columbia, Seth would still be alive.”

Renee hums. “People have been dying from vampire attacks in Columbia for centuries. Seth was out somewhere alone at night. It could have been any vampire.” She pauses, then says knowingly, “Well maybe not _any_ vampire.”

Neil feels his face go hot. “It’s not --,” he says, and stops. He doesn’t want to lie about this. “It’s complicated.”

“You don’t have to explain anything to me,” Renee says sunnily. “Love is love, right?”

“Oh my _God_ ,” Neil says, and presses his forehead against the dashboard while Renee laughs.

\----

Matt and Dan are waiting outside the locker room when they get to the gym. Matt immediately gives Neil a hug so similar to the one from Nicky that he must have given a demonstration. 

Dan squeezes his hand and says, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Neil says. “Can we practice?”

He winces at the harsh edge in his voice, but Dan just smiles at him and squeezes one more time. “Sure,” she says. “Want to run some laps first?”

Neil’s chest tightens in appreciation. “Yeah,” he says.

The rest of the day goes by in a blur. They spend all morning crammed into the auditorium for a memorial assembly. There’s a huge picture of Seth in his Exy uniform balanced on an easel beside a podium. Neil slumps in his chair and watches as a variety of teachers and crying students give speeches about how Seth was smart, and talented, and an amazing friend. Allison is notably absent. 

After school, he throws himself into practice until he can’t see straight, then collapses into Renee’s car and lets her drive him back to Andrew. That only grants him a couple of hours, then he’s in the backyard watching his bruises heal between bouts of sparring with Kevin. 

He has a staredown with Andrew over going on patrol. Even after pushing his body as hard as he can, he still feels antsy. Andrew loses, but orders Nicky into the backseat. They all three end up walking laps around a century-old cemetery. Neil mentions playing Exy. Andrew shoots him a death glare and he drops it. 

Nicky gets bored half an hour in and goes to lie across a bench and text Erik. When they’re across the cemetery from him, Neil says, “Truths?”

Andrew looks in Nicky’s direction, then speaks in French. “If you insist.”

“Nicky doesn’t speak French?” Neil says, following Andrew’s gaze. 

“Is that your question?” Andrew asks dryly.

“What? No.” Neil shakes his head, then pauses, trying to find the words. “Do you do this with humans a lot?” he finally says. He waves a hand awkwardly between them. 

“Does it matter?” Andrew stops walking and looks up at Neil. Neil can’t read anything in his eyes. 

“No,” he says. “I’ve just never done any of this before. I kissed one girl when I was fourteen and it was weird.”

Andrew studies him for a long moment. “Do you like what we’re doing?” he asks. 

“Yes,” Neil says. He does not have to think about it.

“So do I,” Andrew says. “Who cares about anything else?”

Neil shrugs. He doesn’t, not in the long run. It’s not like he’s going to want to stop this, no matter what Andrew’s answer might have been. 

They start walking again. They’ve made another full lap before Andrew says, “No. And never with a slayer.”

He doesn't explain any further, and Neil doesn't push for more.

Two laps later, Andrew stops again. “Why only one girl?”

“Oh,” Neil says. That’s an easy question. “My mom didn’t let me. When I was twelve I talked to a girl in a store and she beat me in the motel room that night. Rinse and repeat. It only took so many bruises to learn my lesson.” It hadn’t helped that he healed so quickly. It just meant she never saw the damage she did. Although Neil isn’t sure she would have cared.

Andrew doesn’t say anything, he just reaches for Neil’s hand and pulls him behind a statue. They kiss against the V of the angel wings until the memories have been washed away. 

When they make their way over to Nicky later, he looks at Neil’s swollen mouth and says, “Hey, no fair. I want to get laid in a graveyard.”

Andrew does not let him back in the car.

\----

Almost a month passes and nothing happens. There are no more attacks. No more demons. The vampires he stakes on patrol are new and confused. The constantly twisting anticipation in Neil’s gut ebbs and flows, but never fully recedes. He pushes himself into practice as hard as he can, until even Dan is telling him to take it easy.

Allison shows up for their next game and they win in a landslide. Afterwards, she hugs Neil and hands him the bags of clothes he’d left on her bedroom floor. They win game after game. Andrew comes to all of them and they make out in his car in the parking lot.

Neil gets better at sparring with Kevin. He starts to be able to anticipate his moves before he makes them and is increasingly quick enough to duck his punches. He doesn’t win nearly every time, but he can hold his own. One night, Kevin tosses Neil a plastic stake and says, “Try to kill me.” So Neil does. Over and over, until he drives the point of the stake into Kevin’s chest and watches him bleed.

“You might have a chance,” Kevin says. The wound is healed before he finishes talking.

Neil sleeps with Andrew every night. Andrew takes him to the house and waits while Neil shoves everything in his duffle and leaves his cot and camp lantern behind. The blacks of their clothing mix together until Neil doesn't know which jeans are his.

Aaron looks at Neil one evening and says, “So should I be worried that my brother is fucking a slayer?”

Andrew says, sharply, “Don’t.”

Neil looks at Katelyn, who shakes her head. “Come on,” she says to Aaron. “Let’s go to the club.”

When they’re gone, Andrew takes Neil to bed and kisses him until Neil’s hips are hitching upwards helplessly. Then he presses his palm lightly against the front of Neil’s sweats and says, “Yes or no?”

“Yes, Neil gasps. Then, for good measure. “Yes, _yes_.”

“Shut up,” Andrew says, then crushes their mouths together and pushes his hand down. His fingers wrap around Neil’s cock and Neil _whines_. He lifts up, following the rhythm of Andrew’s hand until the pleasure crests out of nowhere and he comes all over Andrew’s fingers and his own stomach. 

“ _Andrew_ ," he says, breathless. He reaches out and fists his hand in Andrew’s shirt, drags him in and kisses him. He feels Andrew move against him, pushing his hand down again, and the slick sounds of Andrew working himself off. He covers Neil’s come with his own, then drags his thumb through it all and pushes it against Neil’s bottom lip. 

Neil licks it clean, his eyes locked on Andrew. “How are you real?” Andrew murmurs, and kisses Neil like his life depends on it.

\----

They’re alone in a cemetery the night Riko comes for Neil.

The only warning he gets is the numbness creeping up his spine before the vampires are flooding in from every direction. There are at least two hundred of them, blurs of red and black as they surround Neil and Andrew, spreading out between the gravestones and making sure not to leave any gaps to be escaped through. Andrew moves before Neil can react, grabbing at Neil’s wrist and yanking Neil behind him. Neil turns, putting them back to back, and wonders if he can get to his phone before they die. 

He starts to work his fingers slowly into his back pocket, but stops cold when a voice says, “I wouldn’t do that, slayer.”

The vampires in front of him part like the Red Sea and a man dressed in an impeccably tailored black suit strolls towards Neil. “The game has barely even begun” he says, his voice dripping with power. “You’re going to take all the fun out of it.”

Riko is a little taller than Neil, and striking, with delicate features and neatly styled jet black hair. The waves of energy coming off of him are terrifying. If Andrew feels warm, Riko feels like a bucket of ice water being poured over Neil’s head. 

“What a shame,” Neil snaps. “It looks like you’ve really gone all out.”

“Oh, this isn’t for you,” Riko says. He lifts one finger and the vampires hurtle themselves at Andrew, jerking him away from Neil’s back and surrounding him. They aren’t armed, and Neil can see Andrew fighting inside the swirl of bodies, but there’s too many of them for him to get free before Riko can get to Neil.

Neil turns just in time for Riko to wrap a hand around his arm and drag Neil bodily against him. Neil twists and ducks down, trying to pull away, but Riko gets a hand on his throat and presses down until Neil’s vision is swimming. Then he feels the prick of a needle in his arm and everything goes black.


	12. The Nest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Violence and torture, but nothing worse than canon.

Neil fades in and out. Once, he’s in the trunk of a car. Later, he might be on a plane. He claws desperately at consciousness each time, but it eludes him and he sinks back under. 

When he finally manages to drag himself into something resembling awareness, he’s in what looks like a dorm room. He’s been dumped on top of a single bed. Across from him are a dresser and a bookshelf, both entirely utilitarian. On another wall, there’s a small desk with a plastic chair tucked underneath and a laptop sitting on top. There’s an open door beside the bookshelf that looks like it opens into a bathroom. The only other door is made of steel. Neil assumes it’s the way out.

There are no windows, just a series of round lights embedded in the ceiling. Neil has no idea what time it is, where he is, or how long he’s been here. He presses his palms against the throbbing in his temples and tries to think. The last thing he remembers is the graveyard and Riko and Andrew. 

_Andrew_. Neil has to believe that Andrew is alive. That he managed to fight off enough of the vampires to get away. The thought of any other possibility has his stomach turning. He closes his eyes and breathes in, willing down the urge to vomit. 

The door swings open suddenly, making Neil startle. He looks up to see a vampire standing beside the bed, dressed in the same tailored red shirt and black pants as the vampires from the cemetery. 

“It’s about time you woke up,” the vampire says in a clipped French accent. “Welcome to The Nest.”

Neil squints at him, something familiar pulling in the back of his brain. Then it clicks. “The goalie,” he says. His throat is dry and scratchy. He clears it and tries again. “You’re the goalie.”

“Excellent observation,” the vampire says. “Not usually my preferred position.” He opens the dresser and pulls out a red t-shirt and a pair of black sweatpants, which he tosses at Neil. “Change,” he demands.

Neil pushes the clothes to the side. “I’ll pass.”

The vampire is on him in an instant, hand twisted in Neil’s shirt to yank him halfway off the bed. “Listen,” he growls. “If you don’t want to die, you’ll do what you’re told. The King has no patience for your insolence.” He shoves Neil back down and says, “I’ll be back in five minutes. Make sure you’re dressed.”

Then he leaves and Neil hears a lock click into place. 

He changes reluctantly and leaves his own clothes folded on top of the dresser. When the vampire comes back, he looks Neil up and down and nods before leading the way out of the room. Neil follows him down a corridor lined in doors, with passages branching off every so often. They turn down one of them, then another, and keep twisting through the hallways until Neil’s head is spinning. Other vampires pass them occasionally, but none of them so much as glance at Neil. 

Finally, they come to a stop in front of a set of gold paneled doors, with an enormous gilded crown centered across them. The vampire touches a panel on the wall, and Neil sees a thumbprint scan run before the doors slide silently open. The room beyond is cavernous and ornate. Black walls and floors, offset with long rows of red and gold light fixtures. A plush red carpet runs from the door to the center of the room, where a golden throne is set upon a dias. Riko is sprawled lazily across it, one leg thrown carelessly over a curved golden arm. 

“Bring him closer, Jean,” Riko says. His voice reverberates through the chamber and Neil feels ice water wash over his nerve endings. 

The vampire, Jean, grabs Neil by the elbow and drags him forward. Neil stumbles over his own feet and hits his knees hard when Jean throws him down in front of the dias. His fingers grip Neil’s hair and yank his head back, forcing him to look up at Riko. “Behave,” Jean hisses, so low Neil can barely hear him.

“You’ve been interesting prey,” Riko says, slowly. “You immediately took up with the local vampires, which made me think you might be weak. Why would you need a vampire to defend you from my men if you had the skills to handle it yourself?”

Riko swings his leg over the arm of the chair and leans forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “Then Jean went on his little reconnaissance mission and returned with assurances that you were capable of much more than we thought.”

“Then why kill Seth?” Neil says. Jean jerks at his hair, but Neil grits his teeth and ignores the stab of pain. “Why not just take me right then? Would’ve saved us all a whole lot of trouble.”

Riko sighs. “Did you already forget? It’s a game, slayer. I got tired of round one so now we’ve moved on to round two.”

“What do you _want_?” Neil asks, wildly. “What is the fucking point of all this?”

Riko smiles at him, razor sharp. “To break you.”

Jean drags Neil to his feet and hauls him across the room and through a door off the side of the chamber. There’s a metal table in the middle and grates pitted into the tile floors. On a tray to the side, is a selection of gleaming silver knives. Neil’s chest constricts and he throws himself backwards against Jean, trying to twist out of his grip.

Jean yanks his arm up sharply and Neil cries out as something in his elbow gives and red-hot pain shoots up his arm. “Fuck you,” he pants in French. 

“You’re only making it worse for yourself,” Jean replies in the same language. He tosses Neil on the table and starts buckling thick leather restraints around his wrists and ankles. The door opens and Jean switches to English as Riko strolls in. “He’s ready.”

Riko stops at the tray of instruments and picks up a short blade with a delicate edge. He comes to lean over Neil and grimaces. “Why is he wearing contacts?” he demands, turning to Jean. 

Jean bows his head and lowers his eyes in a clear show of submission. “I didn’t notice,” he says. “I apologize.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Riko sighs. Then he reaches towards Neil’s face and Neil can’t suppress a full body shudder when Riko pries his eyes open one at a time and slides the pad of his thumb across Neil’s eyeballs, removing his brown contacts. 

Riko stares at him for a long, thoughtful moment, an elegant frown tugging at the corners of his mouth. Then he puts one hand up and holds it against the top of Neil’s forehead, hiding his hair. “Well,” he says. “Isn’t _this_ a surprise.”

Neil glares at him defiantly. He refuses to give Riko the satisfaction of asking what the fuck he’s talking about. It turns out he doesn’t have to, because Riko looks at Jean and says, “You remember my sire’s friend Mr. Wesninski?”

Neil’s stomach drops. It’s impossible. His father is a murderer, possibly a serial killer, but not a vampire. Neil has seen him in the sun too many times. He’s felt how hot his father’s hands are when they hold him down.

“Of course,” Jean says. “I believe The Lord refers to him as The Butcher?”

“He does,” Riko agrees. “Do you know why?”

He holds the knife up and digs the point in under Neil’s cheekbone before dragging it slowly down the side of his face. Neil feels the skin split open and warm blood bubble up. He jerks hard in the other direction, but Jean’s cold hands are on him immediately, holding his head in place. 

“No,” Jean says. “I don’t believe I do.”

“That’s a shame.” Riko makes a matching cut on Neil’s other cheek, even though the first one has already sealed closed. “I’ll have to enlighten you.” He wipes Neil’s blood off the knife in his hand and drops it on the tray, then reaches for another one.

“He’s called the Butcher because he’s killed more slayers than any other human in history,” Riko says. He has moved to Neil’s left arm and is using a slightly larger knife to make small, stinging cuts from his elbow down to the top of the restraints on his wrist. The cuts heal as he goes, but that doesn’t deter Riko at all. He simply moves to Neil’s other side and starts anew.

As he works -- moving from Neil’s arms to his neck, to his face, and back again -- he talks about Neil’s father. He tells them that Nathan Wesninski is a serial killer, but with a very narrow demographic. His victims have all been slayers. The Butcher has killed more than twenty slayers on Moriyama orders, making him one of the family’s most valued assets. When he had a son, he was promised into Riko’s service. 

“No one expected you to be a slayer,” Riko tells Neil, and cuts open the front of his shirt. “When your father told me that your powers were starting to manifest, I knew you were perfect. You were supposed to help me become something _great_. Then your whore of a mother took you and ran. I assumed you were dead.”

Jean wraps his hand in the shirt and rips it the rest of the way off of Neil’s body. The scars littering his torso are shiny and pink under the harsh lighting. 

Riko drags the knife across a slice of scar tissue and sighs wistfully. “Too bad you’re damaged goods.”

He picks up a third knife, tests the weight in his hand, and starts cutting patterns around existing scar tissue. When he gets to the thin skin over Neil’s ribs, Neil can’t take it anymore and starts screaming. 

Riko slaps him across the face, shocking him into silence, and snarls, “Shut the fuck up while I’m speaking.”

“Try to be more interesting, then,” Neil spits out, earning himself another backhand.

“You were supposed to be _mine_ , Nathaniel,” Riko hisses. “It’s time to make it right.”

Once Riko is done talking, he’s more than happy to listen to Neil scream. He loses track of how many times Riko cuts him. By the time he’s done, Neil is no longer healing. A line of cuts down his side is bleeding sluggishly and he’s teetering on the edge of consciousness. 

He hears Riko snap, “Fix his hair,” at Jean, and then the sound of the door closing. Then Neil sinks into the welcoming blackness and lets it keep the pain at bay. 

When he comes to again, he’s back in the dorm room. Wincing, he sits up and takes a few deep breaths, surveying the damage to his body. Nothing screams out at him, so he staggers into the bathroom and braces against the cold metal sink. He rinses his face off, feeling the soft bumps of still healing skin, and risks a look in the mirror. His father’s dark red hair and ice blue eyes stare back at him.

\----

Neil rinses the blood off in the shower and inspects his ribs. The cuts are scabbed over, but they ache when Neil presses his fingers against them. He goes back into the bedroom to find a water bottle and a pile of peanut butter protein bars on the desk. None of them seem to have been tampered with, so he sits down in the chair and eats one slowly. All of the furniture appears to be a dark wood grain, but up close Neil can see that it’s made of thick swirled resin. Nothing in the room can be used as a weapon against an angry vampire. 

After reluctantly pulling on another set of red and black clothing from the dresser, Neil takes the bottle of water and sits on the floor in front of the bookcase. The movement tugs at the tender skin on his ribs and he presses a hand against it gingerly. The shelves are filled with books. Some of them Neil recognizes. They’re the same ones he was given by Ms. Winfield. The other books are a mix of nonfiction, most of which are about European history — the rest are autobiographies of retired Exy stars. Neil thinks about Kevin’s stack of Exy magazines and pulls one of the Exy books off the shelf. He reads it until Jean comes to fetch him. 

“Whose room was this,” Neil asks in French. He wants to hear it said out loud.

“It belonged to Riko’s previous slayer,” Jean says tensely. ”Don’t ask Riko about him.”

Neil is strapped down again and this time, when Riko starts cutting him, he heals much more slowly. Riko slices off Neil’s sweats and makes cuts from Neil’s thighs to his ankles. He's dragging a knife across the soles of Neil’s feet when Neil takes a shaky breath and says, “So what happened to the last slayer? Did he leave you for another sociopath?”

Above him, with his hands pressing Neil’s shoulder’s to the table, Jean looks at him like he’s lost his mind.

“He died,” Riko sneers. Then he digs the knives under Neil’s skin and makes him scream until he’s hoarse. 

When Neil is jerked off the table this time, he’s bleeding openly. He can feel his body struggling to knit his skin back together. Unfortunately, it’s a losing battle. Jean drags him out into the throne room, but they don’t go back to the dorms. Instead, Riko follows them and they make their way past Riko’s golden throne and deeper into the chamber. 

There’s a vampire standing in the open space behind the dias. He’s holding a college-aged girl against his chest. She’s awake and struggling, yelling against the gag in her mouth, but the vampire keeps her still like it’s nothing. 

Riko grabs Neil’s shoulder and shoves him forward, onto the ground. A stake drops down beside him. “You’re going to fight this vampire,” he says. “If you win, the human goes free. If you lose, he eats her.”

Neil goes numb. He cannot be responsible for this girl’s life. He looks at her and is reminded of Allison. This time when the nausea overwhelms him, he turns his head to the side and throws up. 

Riko makes a disgusted noise and snaps, “Someone clean that up. Jean, get the girl.”

Neil is jerked back to his feet. Jean takes the girl from the other vampire’s arms and pushes Neil forward.

The other vampire charges at him and Neil ducks, trying to gather any remains of energy. He wraps his fingers around the stake and thinks about sparring with Kevin -- then sweeps his leg out, knocking the vampire off his feet. Before Neil can pin him down, the vampire is up and they struggle with the stake between them. Neil can feel the newly closed cuts on his legs ripping open, and he screams as his vision turns red. He gives one last thrust upwards and hears bones crack as the stake buries itself in the vampire’s heart and he falls to dust at Neil’s feet. 

Everything is silent. Neil can hear his heart pounding in his ears. More pain is starting to filter in, sharp and grounding, and Neil focuses on that. 

After a moment, Riko says, “I guess I’ll just have to try harder tomorrow.” He snaps his fingers and the doors to the chamber open. “Release her,” Riko tells the vampire who comes in. Jean pushes the girl in the vampire’s direction, then grabs Neil and takes him back to his room.

\----

Neil loses the next night. 

This time, the human is a teenage boy only a couple of years younger than Neil. He throws himself into it, but this vampire is older and bigger and he wrenches the stake out of Neil’s hand immediately. After that, it’s all too easy for the vampire to pin him to the ground and hold him there until Neil is too exhausted to struggle anymore. Riko spent hours on his back before the fight and his abused skin is burning where he's pressed against the floor.

Riko makes Jean sit Neil up and hold him in place so he can’t look away as the vampire sinks his fangs into the boy’s throat. Neil struggles to breathe while the boy screams until he goes limp. His head lolls sickeningly to one side. 

Neil curls up in the shower that night and shakes under a cascade of scalding water. He eventually makes it to the bed and clutches his knees to his chest until exhaustion drags him down into a restless sleep. He dreams about the press of Andrew’s mouth against his skin.

\----

Neil wakes up and eats every single protein bar on the desk. Then drinks the entire bottle of water and refills it from the bathroom sink. He’s going to need as much strength as he can gather if he doesn’t want to lose again tonight. He picks up another one of Kevin’s Exy books and forces himself to lie still and read it.

He’s halfway through when he turns a page and an envelope slips out of the book and lands on Neil’s chest. He puts the book down and picks it up, Wymack’s name is written on the front in a sprawling feminine script. Neil hesitates, but ultimately flips the envelope open and pulls out the letter inside. It’s from Kevin’s mother.

Neil skims down the letter, until his eyes catch on the phrase “our son” and he feels a jolt of surprise. He starts over, reading with his full attention. He’s still trying to make sense of it when the door swings open and Jean comes in. Neil scrambles to push the letter under the book as he drops it on the bed, but Jean doesn’t seem to notice. “Let’s not keep The King waiting,” he snaps, gesturing at Neil sharply until he gets up and follows Jean into the hall.

Later, Neil forces down a scream when Riko cuts a fresh line across a still-healing wound. He closes his eyes and replays Exy games in his head while he wrestles his body into stillness. Anything he can do now to conserve energy for what’s coming next. 

He feels less destroyed this time when Jean drags him into the throne room. His legs are steady underneath him when he’s pushed forward. This human is a middle-aged woman who is sobbing in the vampire’s arms and babbling about how she has children who need her. The vampire holding her is Neil’s size, but the power coming off her feels old. 

The vampire pushes the woman at Jean and blurs towards Neil, fangs extended. Before she touches him, Neil hears the whistle of an object in motion over his shoulder and drops to the ground. The vampire explodes into ash above him, sending Neil into a fit of coughing. When he catches his breath, there’s a vampire standing across the room wearing black armbands and black combat boots. 

“Riko,” Aaron says, in a flawless imitation of Andrew’s bored voice. “It’s been _ages_.”


	13. Finders Keepers

Surprise crosses Riko’s face, but he smoothes it away into casual indifference almost instantly. “It’s been three days,” he says. “How did you get in here?”

“Maybe not everyone is as loyal as you think,” Aaron says. “You have something that belongs to me.” He’s missing the sharp undertone of Andrew’s menace. Riko does not seem to notice. 

Riko advances on Aaron, who moves away, leading Riko further from Neil. In motion, Aaron’s clearly practiced body language falls away. He doesn’t stumble, but his steps are a little awkward in the heavy combat boots. Andrew, on the other hand, always seems to glide like they’re part of him. 

Jean grabs Neil’s arm and yanks Neil against him, twisting Neil’s wrists behind his back. He can’t hold both Neil and the woman, so he shoves her away. She falls to her knees and crawls frantically towards the open golden doors behind Aaron.

Riko is moving towards Aaron loosely -- predatory -- but his hands are clenched tightly at his side. If it were really Andrew standing in front of him, Neil doubts he would be giving an inch. He’s not sure Aaron would, either, which means he must be luring Riko closer to him for a reason. 

“He was mine first,” Riko says. “I should be thanking you for bringing him to me. I thought I was acquiring a random slayer, but it turns out Nathaniel Wesninski is alive and well.” He pauses, throwing a glance over his shoulder at Neil. “Or alive, at least.”

“I see no one ever taught you about finders keepers.” Aaron takes another step back. Riko follows him. “It’s basically the first rule of kindergarten.”

Neil twists around in Jean’s grip to try to get a glimpse of the rest of the chamber. If Aaron is here, causing a distraction, then Andrew has to be somewhere. The only doors are the one Aaron came through and the one leading to the small room where Neil has been losing half his blood for the last three nights. There are no visible grates or vents anywhere. If Andrew is coming, Neil has no idea how.

“I haven’t killed you because you’re controlling the Hellmouth,” Riko tells Aaron. He’s standing close enough that Aaron is being forced to look up at him. “That has obviously been a mistake.” 

He reaches for Aaron in a blur, but Aaron jumps out of the way and gives Riko one of Andrew’s blank looks. “The Hellmouth would eat you alive,” he growls. _Too much inflection_ , Neil thinks. 

There’s a soft whirring sound behind Neil. Riko hears it, too, and starts to turn, but Aaron stops him by driving a knee forward and up, directly into Riko’s groin. Riko doubles over, spitting out harsh words in Japanese. 

A curved section of the black marble wall is sliding away when Neil turns around. Andrew and Kevin materialize a second later, on either side of the opening. Andrew is dressed exactly the same as his brother. 

Riko grabs at Aaron again, but Aaron is already gone. He reappears on Andrew’s other side and Riko does a double take, his lip curling back as he looks between them. Then his eyes land on Kevin and he goes still. 

Jean breathes Kevin’s name and takes a step closer, bringing his hand up to wrap around Neil’s throat. Neil tries to yank away but Jean grinds his palm down against a still-bleeding wound dug into Neil’s wrist and Neil cries out. 

Andrew moves towards them. Neil can tell from the way Andrew’s fingers are curled at his side that he’s holding a knife. 

Kevin turns away from Riko. “Jean,” he says, carefully. “We’re not here to kill him. We just came for the slayer.”

Jean’s fingers tighten, cutting off Neil’s air. He seems frozen in indecision between Kevin and Riko, who suddenly snaps into motion and lunges towards Neil, snarling in fury. 

The knife in Andrew’s hand goes flying. Riko tries to dodge it, but it catches him in the shoulder and throws him off balance, knocking him to one knee. He lets out an inhuman roar and rips the knife out of his shoulder. Blood torrents down his arm. 

Jean says something to Kevin in French -- too fast for Neil’s reeling brain to process -- and shoves Neil forward, directly into Andrew. Andrew’s arm closes around his waist, pulling Neil close. The warmth of his presence and the familiarity of his scent washes over Neil and his knees almost buckle in relief. The last thing Neil sees before Andrew moves them is Riko -- on his feet again -- throwing Jean out of the way. 

The opening in the wall leads to a staircase. Andrew hauls Neil off his feet and the passage around them is nothing but a blur as he carries Neil up the stairs and out into a lavish hallway. He catches glimpses of ornate mirrors and thick oriental carpeting, then they push through a reinforced steel door and moonlight washes over them. 

They circle the outside of a Civil War era plantation house, all white columns and wide wooden shutters. It looks like any other mansion from the time period. There’s no hint of the vampires seething underneath the surface. They hurtle over the fence and Neil squeezes his eyes closed against the sudden rush of air. He doesn’t know how far they run before they come to stop behind a gas station. Nicky is there, sitting in the driver’s seat of a black SUV. He whoops when Andrew throws open the back door and pushes Neil inside. 

Aaron climbs into the passenger seat and twists around to look behind them. “Drive,” he tells Nicky, the second the door shuts behind Kevin. “I don’t know how far back they are.”

Nicky hits the gas and peels out of the gas station, tires squealing. The sharp turn he makes onto the highway slings Neil against Andrew’s side.

Aaron says, dryly, “That wasn’t very stealthy.”

“I think we’re okay,” Kevin says. He’s in the far back of the SUV, watching intently out the windows.

Neil closes his eyes again and sags into Andrew. “What’s up with vampires and secret entrances?” he mutters, tipping his head onto Andrew’s shoulder. His entire body aches. “Don’t worry. Yours is better than Riko’s.”

“I hate you,” Andrew mumbles. The next thing Neil feels is Andrew’s face pressing against his hair.

\----

They drive in silence. Nicky turns on the radio once, but Aaron immediately switches it back off. Neil alternates dozing on Andrew’s shoulder with watching trees, billboards, and entire towns flash past them through the windows. There’s a giant sign thanking them for visiting West Virginia. Later, there’s one welcoming them to Greensboro, North Carolina. The deep pink of sunrise is just starting to break the horizon when they pull into a hotel.

Andrew lets Neil walk this time, but keeps a tight arm around his waist. Katelyn is waiting for them in one of two adjoining rooms, each with two queen sized beds. Andrew leads Neil into the second room and sits him down on the bed closest to the wall.

Katelyn comes over with an ice bucket full of water and a first aid kit. Neil shakes his head. He doesn’t want anyone to touch him but Andrew. “I’m fine,” he says. “I just need to sleep.” 

Andrew sighs. “Let her help you,” he says. Then, like he’s reading Neil’s mind, “My medical knowledge is a little out of date.”

“I’m a vampire slayer,” Neil says. His words come out slightly slurred from exhaustion. “I can heal myself.”

“That’s what Kevin said.” Katelyn rolls her eyes good-naturedly. “Unfortunately for you both, I went to medical school.” 

She tugs at the hem of Neil’s shirt, so he peels it off, wincing as the fabric tears away from smears of dried blood. If Katelyn has any thoughts about the marks on his skin -- new or old -- her face doesn’t show it. Her lack of expression rivals Andrew’s as she uses a warm towel to gently wipe the blood off of his chest and stomach. When she gets to the cuts on his ribs -- the ones Riko opened every night -- she stops and rubs alcohol over them, then covers them with bandages. 

She makes him take off the black sweats and does the same thing to his legs and feet, before he has to lie on his stomach so she can do his back. When she’s done, she dumps the water out in the bathroom and goes back through the adjoining door. “I’m really glad you’re okay,” she says to Neil, her voice soft. “There’s water in the fridge and I got you some sandwiches. Kevin said protein bars were fine, which is another reason we don’t listen to him.”

She gives him a warm smile and shuts the door behind her. Neil is finally alone with Andrew. “I’m so tired,” he says. “Can we sleep now?”

“Yes,” Andrew says. He nudges Neil up the bed and pulls the blanket out so Neil can crawl under it. Andrew kicks off his boots and jeans and climbs in. His body is a cool, comforting weight on the mattress at Neil’s side. Neil pushes closer until Andrew wraps around him, tucking Neil against his chest. He falls asleep feeling safe for the first time in days.

\----

Neil wakes up at some point during the day. Kevin is asleep in the second bed and the night stand is cluttered with empty vodka bottles. Neil drinks two bottles of water, eats both of the sandwiches Katelyn left, and curls back into Andrew. The next time he wakes up, light isn’t edging in around the curtains anymore and Andrew is sitting on the edge of the bed.

“We’re leaving in half an hour,” Andrew says. He points at Kevin, who is sitting on the other bed. “He’ll answer your questions until then.”

Kevin sighs. “Really?” he says to Andrew.

“Really,” Andrew says. He looks at Neil. “Ask.”

Neil has so many questions. He hesitates, then starts at the beginning. “How did you get in?” he asks.

Kevin smirks. “Riko thought I would come crawling back, so he never took my prints off the scanners. Once I didn’t, he assumed I was dead and there was no point.”

“Basically,” Andrew says. “We bet on Riko making all the wrong choices, and he did.”

Neil nods. “Where was everyone?” he asks. “The Nest is huge and no one came after us.”

“More bad decisions,” Kevin says. “Riko let Andrew kill the majority of his vampires when he took you, and The Master took most of his to New York this morning. We just had to wait for him to leave and The Nest was basically free game.”

“But Riko didn’t chase us either,” Neil says. He frowns at Andrew. “What kind of blade was that?”

“Wooden,” Andrew says. “I was trying to kill him.” 

Neil says, “Kevin told Jean you wouldn’t.”

Andrew looks at him blankly. “Kevin doesn’t speak for me.”

“Jean would have killed you if he thought we were going to kill Riko,” Kevin says. He sounds resigned. “The Master didn’t allow Riko to sire any vampires until a little over a century ago. Jean was his first. He’s unfailingly loyal.” 

“He said something to you in French,” Neil says. “I didn’t catch it.”

Kevin looks at him and says, in French, “He said you did well.”

\----

In the backseat of the car, Andrew slips another knife out from under one of his armbands and presses it into Neil’s hand. The handle is gold plated, but when he flips the blade out, it’s made of gleaming, razor-sharp wood.

“Andrew,” Neil breathes. He turns the knife over in his hands and runs his thumb up the side of the blade. “This is amazing. Thank you.”

“You clearly need it,” Andrew says. Neil leans against Andrew’s shoulder and admires the knife all the way back to Columbia.

When they get to the house, Nicky tries to go in first but comes up short. “I can’t get in the door,” he says. He puts his hand up and presses against an invisible barrier.

“Stop fucking around.” Kevin shoots Nicky a glare and shoves him out of the way. He doesn’t get any further than Nicky. Kevin swings around and points at Andrew. “It’s the slayer.”

The tiniest corner of Andrew’s mouth quirks up. “You try,” he says. He pushes gently at Neil’s shoulder.

Neil walks around Nicky and right through the threshold. He turns to them and laughs so hard at the look on Kevin’s face that he starts to bleed and has to invite Katelyn in first.

After Neil is bandaged up again, Andrew takes him upstairs and pushes him against the closed bedroom door. 

“Yes,” Neil pants, and fists both hands in Andrew’s shirt to drag him in. The first press of their mouths against each other feels like home.


	14. I Meant Sex

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoopsies, a little more porn.

The next night, Neil makes Andrew take him to the gym, where Wymack has gathered Neil’s friends in the bleachers. Matt starts to get up when he sees Neil, but Andrew moves in closer to Neil’s side and Matt sits down. 

“It’s okay,” Neil murmurs to Andrew. 

“Are you alright?” Dan says. She shoots Andrew a challenging look, but he doesn’t say anything. 

“I’m fine,” Neil says. Then, at her skeptical look, “But there’s some stuff I should tell you.”

He starts at the beginning and tells them about his father and the girl -- the slayer -- he killed in front of Neil. He tells them about being on the run with his mother and about her death. When he gets to Andrew, he tells them how they met and where he’s been staying, but he lets them infer the rest. Finally, he tells them about Riko and the three days in The Nest.

They stare at him in stunned silence until Allison says, “Your hair looks better like this. And those contacts weren’t doing you any favors.”

Neil laughs, relieved, and some of the tension breaks. “I was going to dye it back,” he says. 

Beside him, Andrew says, “No.” Neil turns to him, and he lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “No point.” 

Neil thinks about Andrew in bed the night before, twisting his fingers in Neil’s hair and sifting through the red strands. “Okay,” he says. 

A decision is made that Neil will take a week entirely off before he’s allowed to return to school or practice. Andrew doesn’t want him to do either, but Neil threatens to pick any locks he puts on the doors and escape anyway. Before they leave, Neil lets everyone hug him and fuss over his hair and his eyes and how he isn’t dead. Andrew stands to one side and endures it with remarkable patience. 

In the car, Neil watches Andrew’s profile as he drives. Until they stop at a light and Andrew glances at him. “Stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?” Neil says.

Andrew rolls his eyes. “I hate everything about you,” he says. When the light turns green, he reaches for Neil’s hand.

\----

At home, Neil sits on the bathroom counter as Katelyn peels off the last of the bandages on his ribs. “Good as new,” she says.

Neil looks down and they both ignore the new lines of thin pink scar tissue. Considering everything Riko did to him, Neil thinks it could be worse. The rest of Riko’s marks have faded away to nothing. 

Katelyn leaves and Andrew locks the door behind her. He turns the shower on, then pushes at the remains of Neil’s clothing and guides him under the quickly warming spray. Neil tips his head forward and lets the water pound over his shoulders. A minute later, the shower curtain slides back and Andrew climbs in. 

Neil sucks in a surprised breath and _looks_ at Andrew. He lets his eyes drag over the hard planes of his body and follows a water droplet down to the jut of Andrew’s hip. When he drags his gaze back up, Andrew’s eyes are nearly black. 

“Yes,” Neil says. He reaches his hands out and -- at Andrew’s nod -- slides them around his shoulders to pull him closer. Andrew is warm against him under the steaming water and Neil kisses him until they’re both hard. 

Andrew drags his mouth down Neil’s neck, stopping to scrape flat human teeth over Neil’s pulse point. Neil hears himself whimper and he arches desperately, trying to get more of Andrew’s body pressed against him. 

“One day,” Andrew says. “You’re going to ask me to bite you.” His mouth slides up until he’s talking against Neil’s ear. “And I’m going to make it so good.”

“Fuck,” Neil gasps. He thinks about Andrew’s teeth sinking into his throat and knows it should make him want to stop doing any of this. Instead, he digs his fingernails into the backs of Andrew’s shoulders and ruts desperately against his hip. “ _Andrew_.”

Andrew kisses him again, hard and fast. “Everyone can hear you when you’re loud,” he says into Neil’s mouth. Then he drops to his knees and takes Neil’s cock all the way down this throat. 

Neil knows the other vampires are home. He knows they have incredibly sensitive hearing. He just doesn’t care. The slick rhythm of Andrew’s mouth is too good. 

Carefully, Neil works his fingers into Andrew’s wet curls and looks down. He watches his dick disappear into the hollow of Andrew’s cheeks and the movement of Andrew’s hand where he’s jerking off between the spread of Neil’s legs. He doesn’t try to stifle the cry that punches out of his chest as pleasure washes over him and he comes on Andrew’s tongue.

\----

When they go downstairs later, Nicky waggles his eyebrows at Neil from the couch, then laughs when Neil refuses to acknowledge him. “Aaron and Katelyn went to the club,” he tells Andrew. “Aaron says you owe him like a week off.”

“Oh, sorry,” Andrew says. “Does he want credit for having to pull his own weight one time after 200 years?”

Nicky rolls his eyes fondly. “I’m just the messenger,” he says.

Neil asks, “Where’s Kevin?” Nicky points towards the kitchen.

In the kitchen, Kevin is leaning against the counter, drinking from a frosted-over bottle of vodka like it’s water.

Neil waits for Andrew to catch up to him, then speaks in French. “I know about your father,” he says to Kevin. “I found the letter.”

Kevin chokes on a mouthful of vodka and almost drops the bottle. When he looks at Neil, his face is carefully closed off. “That’s none of your business.”

“I think it is,” Neil disagrees. “Andrew said you’ve been here a little under a year. You obviously came here because of him. Why haven’t you told him?”

“What letter?” Andrew says.

Kevin sighs and lifts the bottle to his mouth. When he puts it down again, he says, “I think it was with my mother’s things when she died. I stole it from The Master’s library not long before Riko turned me.” 

Andrew just seems more irritated by this explanation, so Neil turns to him. “Wymack is Kevin’s father,” he says. Andrew’s face twitches fractionally -- the only sign of surprise Neil catches.

Kevin finishes the bottle and drops it into the sink, then goes to the freezer and gets out another one. “I looked him up after Riko kicked me out,” he says. “He’d just been assigned to Columbia. When I got here, I couldn’t face the idea of telling him what I was, so I asked another vampire who was in charge and ended up at Eden’s.”

“You have to tell him,” Neil insists. “I understand why you didn’t, but he deserves to know. You will never know how he’ll react unless you talk to him.”

“Fuck _off_ ,” Kevin snaps. He clutches his bottle of vodka and pushes past Neil and Andrew. 

“Kevin’s mother should have told him when Kevin was born,” Neil says to Andrew, still in French. “In the letter, she said she told him the baby was someone else’s because she was scared to tell the Watchers Council about their relationship.”

“Watchers,” Andrew says. The derisive tone in his voice speaks for itself. 

Nicky sticks his head into the kitchen and glares at them. “If you’re going to gossip in a language I don’t understand, I’m leaving.” He gives Neil another leering eyebrow wiggle. ”Erik will soothe me in languages I know all the words to.”

He ducks out of the kitchen, but pops back in a second later. “I meant sex,” he tells Neil. 

Neil gives him a dry thumbs up. “Got it.”

\----

Even after Neil is healed, Andrew says no to patrolling. For once, Neil doesn’t argue. He vividly remembers the swarm of vampires descending on Andrew in the graveyard that night. He’s in no rush to repeat the experience.

Andrew also says no to running, which Neil has far more objections to. He tries to make a case for himself, but Andrew just stares him down until Neil gives in. They both know this is only a moment of peace before whatever Riko throws at them next. This is the eye of the hurricane.

“He’s not going to let me go forever,” Neil tells Andrew. “He thinks I belong to him.”

They’re sitting on the roof, lit cigarettes glowing between them. Andrew takes a long drag and blows smoke up into the sky. “I know,” he says. “We have to be ready.”

“So you can kill him,” Neil says. It is not a question.

Andrew reaches out and grips Neil’s chin between his strong fingers. He turns Neil to face him and their eyes lock. “One of us will,” he says. Neil knows it’s a promise.

Back in the confines of the house, Neil feels twitchy and restless. It’s been three nights since he was rescued from The Nest and he’s only been out once -- to see his friends at the gym that first night. He fidgets on the couch while Andrew ignores him and taps at his phone screen. Two hours later, Neil is forcing himself not to get up and pace when the doorbell rings and Andrew says, “I got you something.”

Neil watches with interest as Andrew gets up and goes to answer the door. A grin stretches across his face when Andrew returns, wheeling a folded up treadmill. He plugs it in on the far side of the room and looks at Neil. “Turns out you can run inside,” he says. “A miracle of modern technology.”

“You like me,” Neil says, delighted. He crosses the room and presses a kiss against Andrew’s jaw. “I won’t tell anyone.”

He darts away before Andrew can grab him and goes to change clothes. Then he runs on the treadmill until he’s too exhausted to think anymore. When he wakes up the next afternoon, he does it again. The treadmill helps, but Neil’s skin feels like it's on too tight and he thinks he might be going crazy.

By the time Andrew gets up, Neil is showered and wearing one of Andrew’s favorite pairs of jeans. He doesn’t miss the way Andrew’s eyes go hot when he notices. 

“I have to get out of the house,” Neil says. He leans back against the door and bites his lower lip, watches Andrew track the movement. “Can we go to Eden’s?”

They haven’t been doing this long, but Neil is a quick study and Andrew’s obsession with his mouth was easy to figure out. He swipes his tongue out, the same way he does when he’s licking come off Andrew’s fingers. 

“Later,” Andrew says, and goes to take a shower.

Andrew makes him wait until the rest of the vampires are ready. He ignores Neil’s frustration and plays video games on the couch with Aaron while Nicky and Katelyn take their time. Neil sits beside him and pulls his knees up. He’s getting antsier by the minute. Finally, Nicky and Katelyn come downstairs and they can leave. Neither of them look _so great_ that it should have taken them that long.

By the time they get to Eden’s, Neil can hear the bass pumping from the passenger seat of Andrew’s car and there’s a line wrapped around the building. They go in the back entrance and Andrew pulls him into the writhing mass of bodies on the dance floor. Andrew’s fingers push into Neil’s back pockets -- pulling Neil close until there’s no space between them -- and Neil lets Andrew take control. Dancing with Nicky had been an awkward stumble. With Andrew, all it takes is the smooth roll of their hips against each other for Neil to fall into the rhythm. 

They dance until Neil is sweaty and his heart is pounding. He’s lost all track of time in the hot grind of their bodies. He throws his head back -- searching futility for fresh air -- and when he looks down again Andrew’s eyes are latched on to the throbbing pulse at the base of Neil’s neck. He drags Neil down into a desperate, hungry kiss, then starts leading him backwards across the club, until they reach the corner where the entrance to Andrew’s office is hidden. 

Neil ends up straddling Andrew’s lap in the giant wingback chair. Their jeans are hastily shoved aside and Andrew’s strong hand wraps around both of them while he sucks a row of quickly-fading marks down the line of Neil’s throat. Neil holds onto Andrew’s hair like a lifeline and comes undone in Andrew’s arms.

\----

Neil wakes up to find himself tied to Andrew’s bed in the middle of Riko’s throne room. The black marble curves up over his head and the red lights hanging from the domed ceiling remind Neil of dripping fangs. There’s a bone-chilling laugh and Riko appears above him, suspended in mid-air. Andrew’s knife is sticking out of his shoulder.

“I told him you were mine,” Riko snarls. Neil opens his mouth but he can’t force any noises out as Riko slowly floats closer until he’s standing on the dias above Neil.

Riko snaps his fingers and suddenly, Andrew is sitting at his side. Familiar black leather restraints are holding him to Riko’s golden throne. With a sneer, Riko pulls the knife from his shoulder. It makes a terrible wet sound and blood immediately begins running from the bottom of his tailored coat sleeve. It flows off the edge of the dias and drips onto the bed beside Neil’s head, blooming red across the white sheets. 

Neil thrashes against his restraints as Riko brings the wooden blade to Andrew’s throat. He drags it under Andrew’s jaw, splitting his skin and overwhelming Neil’s vision with the amount of blood that gushes out, covering the front of Andrew’s body as he twitches and gurgles on the throne. Neil screams silently when Andrew goes limp and throws himself forward as hard as he can. The restraints give way at the last minute and Neil hurtles off the edge of the bed. 

Before he hits the ground, he jolts into awareness. He’s sitting up in Andrew’s bed, still in Andrew’s bedroom in Columbia, soaked in sweat. Andrew is passed out beside him, one still arm draped over his face. Neil gets up and goes to the kitchen, where he chugs a glass of water and counts in a variety of languages until he manages to untangle his brain from the fading remains of the dream. 

In the living room, there’s a new black iPhone on the table. His name is written on a Post-it note stuck to the screen with a little heart drawn over the I. It even has the same ridiculous case that Matt bought him for his last phone, which Neil hasn’t seen since the night Riko dragged him out of the cemetery. Neil can’t decide if Nicky or Katelyn is responsible. Maybe both.

Neil turns the phone on and signs into his account. The phone updates for a few minutes, then the texts come flooding in. His screen fills with worried messages from his friends, that pop up and vanish again faster than Neil can read them. When the parade of notifications stops, Neil opens his messages app and scrolls through them. The newest message, at the very top, is from a number that Neil doesn’t recognize.

He thinks it must be a mistake, or a wrong number, because all it says is, “29.” There’s another message underneath it, from the day before. It says, “30.”


	15. Wrong Number

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I changed the fic summary for this thing a little bit. It's definitely still inspired by Buffy, but idk that I'd call it a Buffy AU anymore. It's kind of taken on a life of its own. Especially the Hellmouth. 
> 
> Do I still need to warn for dicks? Because there are more dicks in this chapter.

When the numbers get to 27, Neil sends a reply that says, “Sorry, wrong number.” Unsurprisingly, there’s no response.

The next day, he gets a 26 and sends the same messages back. He does not tell Andrew. It’s a local area code, not West Virginia, and is obviously a countdown. But with no additional information he doesn’t know what Andrew could possibly do about it. 

He checks his phone as soon as he wakes up, but he only finds three texts from Matt and a voicemail from the school letting him know he was absent today. There is no 25. Hopefully they redirected the messages to their intended target. Neil refuses to entertain what this means if the countdown is intended for him.

Later, Andrew is in the shower and Neil is sitting at the table, eating a box of chicken strips that Nicky brought him before he and Aaron left for the club. He’s ignoring Katelyn, who is sitting across from him and watching.

She sighs, wistful, and says, “I miss food.”

“That’s not food,” Kevin says. Kevin is leaning against a counter drinking straight vodka, so Neil disregards his opinion. 

“It’s literally chicken,” Katelyn says. She does not sound fussed. “Remember when I wanted to put ice cream in blood and make a float and you told Aaron I was an abomination?”

“I stand by that,” Kevin says. 

Neil tilts his head at Katelyn. “How was it?”

She shrugs, cheerful. “Gross.”

Neil’s phone buzzes on the table just as Andrew comes into the room, pushing damp hair out of his eyes. Neil is distracted, momentarily, by the cling of Andrew’s t-shirt to his chest as he lifts his arm. When he looks up, Andrew’s eyes are amused. “Junkie,” he says. 

“Yeah,” Neil agrees. A little over a month ago he wasn’t even sure he understood the appeal of kissing. Now he would happily stay in Andrew’s bed all night as long as it meant Andrew’s mouth and hands were on him. 

His phone buzzes again and he flips it over. The first notification is from his Exy app, the second is from a number that Neil recognizes all too well. He opens it and sees “25.”

“What’s that?” Andrew asks. He reaches over and plucks the phone from Neil’s hand.

Neil shrugs. “Wrong number, I think?” He knows he does not sound convinced.

Andrew scrolls up the screen, then puts Neil’s phone in his pocket. “Sometimes,” he says slowly. In Spanish, of all languages. Kevin and Katelyn both look confused. “I forget how much of a disaster you are. Then their King starts sending you a fucking countdown and you tell him that he has the _wrong number_?”

“We don’t know that it’s him,” Neil points out. “Why would he tell us when he’s coming? It ruins his element of surprise.”

“This is boring now,” Katelyn says. She gets up and ruffles Neil’s hair on her way out of the room. Andrew’s glare gets no reaction. 

Kevin looks at Neil. “Buy some goddamn vegetables,” he says. Then he takes his vodka and follows Katelyn into the living room. 

Andrew waits until they’re gone and says, still in Spanish, “He surprised us last time, he won’t do it again. This way he’s forcing you to think about the infinite number of painful things he could do to you”

“He’s also giving us time to prepare,” Neil counters. “I’m going back to school tomorrow, so I can start training again. Kevin can beat me up some more, too.”

He expects an argument about school, but instead Andrew says, “Why didn’t you tell me?” His voice is mild but there’s a tightness to it that makes Neil think he’s teetering on the edge of furious.

Neil sighs and rubs at his eyes. He’s still not used to the absence of contacts. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t want it to be from him and, if it was, I didn’t want you to be upset over something you can’t do anything about.”

“Let me decide what I get to be upset about,” Andrew says. He reaches down and cups Neil’s jaw in the palm of his hand. “And stop being an idiot. Denial gets you nowhere.”

“I’ll try,” Neil says, solemn. “I can’t promise it’ll work.”

\----

Neil has been sleeping on a vampire-centered schedule for over a week, so Renee’s horn blasting in the driveway the next morning is not particularly welcome. He brushes his teeth, drags on the first clothes he finds, and flops into the passenger seat. She hands him a cup of coffee.

“You’re a goddess,” Neil says. 

The coffee is gone by the time they get to school and Neil feels a little more prepared to face his friends. They’re all waiting on the sidewalk outside the gym, and they immediately circle him. “Guys,” Renee says. She links her arm through Neil’s and tugs him away. “We’re the only team practicing this morning, let’s take this inside.”

Wymack watches them walk towards the doors and blows his whistle. As they go in, Neil hears him yell at the rest of the team to keep running. He follows Renee onto the court and they all sit in a tight circle on top of the orange and black C painted at half-court.

“Are you okay?” Dan asks.

Allison holds a hand up and says, “No, he’s just going to say he’s fine.” She looks at Neil. “The real question is, are you _dating_ a vampire?”

“What does that even mean?” Neil says. If she means: are he and Andrew doing what she and Seth used to do, the answer is _definitely not_. 

“Okay,” Allison says. “Let me try again. Are you making out with a 200 year-old vampire, Neil?”

Neil can answer that. “Yes,” he says. And then, since he can already feel himself blushing, he adds, “A lot.”

Allison grins at him triumphantly. “That’s hot,” she says. “I’ll show you The Vampire Diaries one day.”

Matt hasn’t said anything, so Neil turns to him. “I know I said I didn’t swing or whatever,” he says. “I wasn’t lying. Andrew is just…” he trails off. He has no idea how to put Andrew into words, but he doesn’t want Matt to think Neil is still hiding himself from them.

Matt stops him. ‘Who gives a fuck?” he says. He throws an arm around Neil’s shoulders and Neil finds himself being dragged into Matt’s side. “As long as you’re happy, you can fuck a werewolf for all we care.”

“Oh,” Neil says. “I don’t think werewolves are real.” 

Matt lets go of Neil and says, “Sure they are, I read about them in one of those books. After the demon tried to paralyze me.”

“Neil’s sex life aside,” Dan says. “What happens now?”

There’s no reason to keep the countdown a secret, either, so Neil tells them about it. And how the only option he really has is to prepare as well as he can and hope for the best. His friends listen intently, their faces fixed in a variety of frowns. Then Dan says, “Fine. We’ll help.” 

Neil opens his mouth to object, but that’s when the court doors slam open and the rest of the team starts jogging in. “Talk later,” Dan says, as their little huddle breaks up. Like Neil is going to be -- in any way -- willing to put them in the line of fire.

\----

They don’t get another chance to talk. Neil goes to tutoring during lunch and before practice, trying to catch up on all the work he missed. When he gets to the gym, the rest of the team is already on the court. Renee is the only one left when he comes out to the parking lot, and she drives him home in silence. He checks his phone on the way and there’s another text. “24.”

Neil sits on the couch and tries to distract himself with Kevin’s seemingly endless supply of Exy magazines. He has to think of a way to keep his friends safe without pushing them away. They’re fragile and human, he doesn’t want them anywhere near vampires or demons. Unfortunately, they have also become his family and he’s starting to learn that means not shutting them out when his life gets dangerous or complicated. It doesn’t help that the long day of school and Exy was incredibly draining after a week of sleeping until 3PM and not being allowed to practice. 

It’s a relief when Kevin comes downstairs and takes him outside to spar. Focusing on dodging Kevin’s hits -- and trying to be fast enough to get in some of his own -- takes up all of Neil’s attention. When they’re done, Nicky puts a movie on the television and Neil makes it half an hour before he falls asleep on Andrew’s shoulder.

\----

As Renee turns into the gym parking lot the next morning, Neil hears a shriek. He looks up in time to see Dan stab the end of her Exy stick through the neck of a huge, mangy black wolf with glowing red eyes. It howls and snaps yellow fangs at her with blood pouring out of its mouth and splashing against the concrete at her feet. Neil throws himself out of the car as Dan yanks the racquet out of the wolf’s throat and hits it as hard as she can across the head. The wolf stumbles and goes down. Neil skids to a stop beside Dan and they watch as the corpse twitches, then dissolves into black smoke.

“What the _fuck_ ,” Dan says. 

Renee comes up behind them and Neil turns to see her car parked haphazardly a few yards away. “Was that a wolf?” she asks. “It was huge.”

“Do wolves turn into smoke?” Dan asks. She grimaces at the gore covering the end of her desecrated racquet and tosses it on the ground. “We should tell Coach.”

“Are you okay?” Neil asks. She looks remarkably calm. He wonders if maybe she’s in shock. 

“I think so,” Dan says. “Wait, was that a werewolf?”

Then Renee hisses, “Behind you,” and whips something out of her hair. Neil grabs Dan’s arm and pulls her down underneath him. She lets out a surprised shriek directly into his ear when another wolf hits the ground a few feet from their faces. It has a silver hairpin sticking out of one eye as it turns to smoke. The pin lands on the cement with a soft clatter.

“Inside,” Neil says. He half carries Dan up the stairs and into the gym. Renee is right behind them. They collapse inside the doors just as Matt comes around the corner, calling Dan’s name. Neil distangles himself and sits up as Mass rushes over.

“That’s so badass, babe,” Matt says when Dan tells him about the wolves, even as he pushes up her sleeves to check for injuries. 

They find Allison and take her to Wymack’s office, where they repeat the whole story. 

“Hellhounds,” Wymack says. He points his coffee mug at Neil. It reads _Repeat After Me: Yes Coach_. “What did you do?”

“Nothing,” Neil says. “Did you miss the part about how I’ve been on house arrest for a week?”

“Those things came straight from Hell,” Wymack says. “Either someone summoned them, or the Hellmouth is pissed off. 

Dan nudges Neil with her shoulder. “Tell him about the countdown,” she urges. Turns out that she is not in shock, just capable of rolling with the punches. 

So Neil tells him about the texts and shows Wymack his phone. Wymack sighs. “Whatever is coming, the Hellmouth doesn’t like it. I know your pet monster doesn’t want you to patrol, but this is probably only going to get worse.”

“I’ll talk to Andrew,” Neil says. He takes his phone back from Wymack with a cold look. “Don’t call him that.”

Andrew is a lot of things, including a vampire, but Neil will not hear him referred to as a monster.

\----

As the sun sets, Neil crawls into bed with Andrew and watches him until he starts to wake up.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Andrew says. He reaches out and presses his palm against Neil’s face, pushing him away. 

“I like looking at you,” Neil says, smiling around Andrew’s hand. He waits until Andrew’s arm drops and says, “Wymack says the Hellmouth is throwing a tantrum about whatever Riko is planning. He wants me to patrol.”

Andrew rolls on his back and looks up at the ceiling. “I’m not surprised,” he says. “It doesn’t want something as evil as Riko in Columbia and you’re the reason he’s coming.”

“Awesome,” Neil says. “Does that mean we can patrol?”

“Yes,” Andrew says. “Now if I take off my shirt will you stop talking?”

Neil considers that for a second. “No,” he says. He wiggles in closer, until he can nuzzle at Andrew’s shoulder, and mumbles, “Speaking of, will you let me touch you?”

“You touch me all the time,” Andrew says. “You’re touching me right now.”

Neil leans up on one elbow so he can look down into Andrew’s eyes. “I want to get you off,” he says. 

Andrew studies his face for a beat. “Are you sure?” he asks. “I know what it’s like to not get to choose your firsts.”

“You’re nothing like that,” Neil says. He touches the line of Andrew’s cheekbone and trails his fingertips down to press over Andrew’s mouth. “I trust you.”

Andrew nips at his fingers. “I hate you,” he says, and pushes up to claim Neil’s mouth. They kiss until Neil is grinding against Andrew’s hip and saying, “Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Andrew says. He rolls Neil underneath him and guides Neil’s hand down between their bodies. Andrew’s cock is thick and heavy when Neil wraps his fingers around it and pulls it free of Andrew’s sweats. He thinks about what Andrew does to him and drags the flat of his thumb over the head, smearing slickness down to make the slide of his hand smooth. He licks back into Andrew’s mouth and catalogues the soft noises Andrew makes as he sets a rhythm.

Andrew comes over Neil’s fingers and the way he says Neil’s name goes straight to Neil’s dick. He thrusts down against Andrew’s thigh where it’s wedged between his and throws his head back, panting. Andrew drops his mouth and bites down on the delicate skin over Neil’s collarbone. The scrape of Andrew’s human teeth sends a burst of sheer _want_ through Neil’s body and he comes against the hard press of Andrew’s leg with a desperate moan. 

On the nightstand, Neil’s phone buzzes. He doesn’t have to look at the message to know it says “23.”


	16. Rocks and Plants

The next night, Andrew brings Aaron and they go on patrol. Aaron looks at Neil and says, “You play Exy, right?”

“ _Yes,_ ” Neil says. 

Aaron looks relieved. “Thank fuck. Let’s talk about that.”

On Neil’s other side, Andrew says, “I’m feeling some regret.

Aaron is halfway through a story about how he took two consecutive overnight flights to Japan to watch the German Exy team win gold at the Olympics, when Andrew says, “For fucks sake.”

“I invited you to come with me,” Aaron says, affronted. 

“No.” Andrew jerks his head towards the front entrance to the cemetery. Neil turns to see Matt and Dan coming through the gates. They’re both carrying Exy racquets. 

“It took forever to find you,” Matt calls out. “That Maserati is sexy as fuck, but really hard to spot in the dark.

Neil jogs over to meet them. “What are you doing here?” he says. “It’s dangerous.”

“We’ve come on patrol before,” Dan points out. 

“Yeah, but.” Neil looks over his shoulder at Andrew, then back to his friends. “This is different. We don’t know what’s out there.”

“I killed that hellhound,” Dan says. She wields the Exy stick in front of her body. “I think I can handle it.”

Neil looks back at the vampires again, then sighs. “You’re already here,” he says. “But you can’t keep doing this.”

When he leads his friends over to Aaron and Andrew, their lips are pursed in identical scowls. “Andrew,” Neil says. “Matt was just telling me how your car is ‘sexy as fuck’, so maybe you’d like to hear more about that.”

Matt says, “Oh man, I bet it drives like a dream.”

Andrew looks at Neil, then back at Matt. “Yes,” he says.

That’s all the encouragement Matt needs. He starts talking about cars and features and Andrew doesn’t necessarily look interested, but he doesn’t look murderous. Neil counts it as a win

Next, he says to Dan, “Aaron was telling me how he saw Germany win the Olympics in 1998, if you’re interested.”

“That game is _legendary_ ,” Dan says. She turns wide eyes on Aaron. “Tell me everything.”

After that, patrol goes smoothly. Andrew snaps the neck of a weird lizard demon that comes slithering over the fence, and Neil realizes _oh, that’s what hot looks like._ When Matt and Dan leave, Neil locks Aaron out of the car and climbs into Andrew’s lap in the shadow of the iron cemetery gates..

\----

The second night of patrol, Day 21, Allison and Renee show up at the cemetery. Andrew seems resigned, but not angry. It probably helps that they brought Nicky and he and Allison immediately drop back and begin to talk animatedly. Renee falls into step in Nicky’s place and they walk in comfortable silence until a vampire bursts out of the soil close to their path and Allison shrieks so loud that the vampire stops and covers its ears. It’s still wincing at the sound when Nicky bounds forward and rips its head off, turning the whole thing to dust.

On Day 20 of the countdown, Neil is watching college Exy with Kevin when the doorbell rings and Andrew goes to open it. “No patrol tonight,” he says to Neil on his way. “Text your dumb friends.”

He sends the text and gets a round of responses, from Matt’s “boo” to Allison’s “I’m still washing the vampire ash out of my hair.” 

Andrew comes back with a middle-aged woman with light brown skin and kind eyes behind narrow glasses. Her presence is comforting against Neil’s senses, the same way Andrew is warm. She’s not a vampire, but Neil would put money on her not being completely human, either. 

“This is Betsy Dobson,” Andrew says. “She’s a witch.” He sounds fond, which is usually a tone Neil only hears when Andrew is telling him how much he hates him. 

Neil stands up and the witch looks at him. “You must be Neil. Please call me Bee.”

At the same moment, Nicky comes rushing down the stairs and throws his arms around her. “Bee!” he yells. “You’re here. Are we in trouble?”

“Not more than usual, I hope,” Bee says. She hugs Nicky back, then moves on to Katelyn and Aaron, who have followed Nicky to the living room. They’re all three dressed for Eden’s.

“Everything is good?” she says to Katelyn

Katelyn smiles and says, “It’s great.”

“I need you to make some amulets,” Andrew says when Bee turns back to him. “For humans.”

“For your slayer?” Bee asks. She looks at the other vampires and says, “It was lovely to see you all. I promise to come for a social visit soon.”

There’s another round of hugs, and they all disperse. Even Kevin hauls himself off the couch and goes upstairs with a nod in Bee’s direction. 

“How is he?” Bee asks Andrew, her brow creasing in concern. 

Andrew shrugs. “Who can tell?”

“You can,” Bee says. “But if you aren’t worried, I won’t press the issue.”

Andrew sighs. “He’s good, I think. He didn’t have a breakdown when we saw Riko at The Nest.”

“Of course.” Bee turns back to Neil. “Unfortunately, I can’t protect you directly from Riko. My magic doesn’t work particularly well against vampires and their death magic. Andrew says there are demons involved, though?”

“Uh, yeah.” Neil doesn’t know why Andrew seems to trust this witch, but his confidence is enough for Neil to not immediately discount her. “My coach -- my Watcher -- said the Hellmouth is pissed off because Riko is coming after me.”

“Hellmouths can be finicky,” she says thoughtfully. “I’m impressed with your Watcher, most of them don’t realize that Hellmouths are just sentient enough to cause problems when they feel threatened.”

Bee sets her massive handbag down on the coffee table and starts taking things out of it. Small corked bottles of herbs, a tied together bunch of thin leather strips, a handful of shiny colored stones. 

She takes out a tiny portable Bunsen burner and a small set of tongs, then continues. “This one didn’t like the vampires who were in charge before these boys showed up. I helped Andrew take over and things have been much calmer for the last sixty years.” 

She gives Andrew an affectionate look and hands him the cord for her burner. He obediently goes to plug it in. While she's looking at Andrew, Neil studies her more closely. She doesn't look older than fifty. Definitely not old enough to have been helping Andrew gain control of the Hellmouth in the '60s. Magic, he assumes. 

Finally, Bee sets down a small wooden plate, followed by a thick, leather bound book with creased, yellowing pages and comes to sit on the end of the couch. “There wasn’t a particular uptick in demon activity when you came here, either. Which means the Hellmouth must not see you as a threat on your own. Add in a powerful, angry vampire, though.” She shrugs one shoulder. “It gets a little territorial.”

“And you’re going to protect me from it with rocks and plants?” Neil asks skeptically. He sits down at the other end of the sectional when she gestures. “Because, no offense, but I don’t think a chunk of amethyst is going to protect me from anything.”

“Of course not,” Bee says. “It’s merely a physical vessel. Your magic is going to protect you, the amulet will just tell it how.”

“Magic?” Neil says. “Like wands and spells and shit?”

Bee hums. “Not exactly. More like elements. Slayer magic is earth magic, which is closely tied to the death magic vampires use. My magic is air magic, others have water magic.” She indicates the pile of stones. “These are from the earth, so they can bind to your magic.”

“Can you bind his magic to stones he isn’t wearing,” Andrew asks. He’s standing behind Neil, leaning over the back of the couch at Neil’s shoulder. “He has all these human friends.”

Neil tips his head back and looks up at Andrew, surprised. Andrew meets him with a glare already in place. Neil grins at him anyway. Andrew thought about Neil’s friends. Neil will take them as many rock necklaces as Bee wants him to if it’s a result of Andrew _caring_. 

“Shut the fuck up,” Andrew says. He tugs at one Neil’s curls. “You associate with people as dumb as you are.”

“That sounds hard for you,” Neil tells him. He looks back at Bee. “Can I pick the colors?”

She smiles. “Of course. Then, to Andrew she says, “Yes, I can do that. You’ll have to leave, I’m afraid. Otherwise, your magic is going to be overwhelming.”

Andrew grabs his cigarettes off the coffee table and goes through the kitchen and out the back door. When he’s gone, Bee starts to mix herbs onto the wooden plate from her bag while Neil chooses stones. He watches as she opens the book and reads the same latin phrases over each stone, before she dips them into a metal bowl of water she asks Neil to bring her from the kitchen. She rolls the wet stones across the plate of herbs, then lights the burner and uses the tongs to hold the stones over the flame until they glow. Finally, she drops the hot stones back into the bowl of water, where they sizzle and pop. 

After the noises stop, she pulls the first one out, a sea-glass green stone that Neil chose for Renee. It’s undamaged. When Bee hands it to Neil, he holds it up under the floor lamp beside the couch. The smooth surface of the stone shimmers, lightly iridescent. 

“These will protect us?” Neil asks. He lays the stone on the coffee table beside the others. “How?”

“They’ll boost your protection,” Bee says. “The main thing is that demons won’t want to come near them. Your power should be amplified enough to give them a clear warning. The tie to your powers will boost healing, too. For you and the humans.” 

She starts wrapping the stones in leather straps, tying complicated leather knots around the top. When she’s done, there are five necklaces on the coffee table. Neil picks up the hazel-gold one that reminds him of Andrew’s eyes and drops it around his neck. Bee smiles at him knowingly.

“It was so nice to meet you,” she says, tugging the plug to her burner free from the wall and sweeping everything into her bag. “I’ll just go say goodbye to Andrew.”

\----

The next morning, Day 19, Neil passes the amulets out before practice.

“These are beautiful,” Dan breathes. She holds her swirling teal stone up and watches the sun stream through it. 

Allison tucks her deep purple necklace into the neckline of her practice sweats. Renee does the same. Matt’s appears to be pure black until the light hits it, revealing a vein of silver running deep under the surface. He hangs it over his neck and grins at Neil. “I can’t believe you got us magic necklaces.”

“It was Andrew’s idea,” Neil says. “I think he doesn’t want to watch you die in front of him on patrol.”

Any remaining hope he might have about keeping his friends away from demons is completely dashed when they show up that night en masse. He and Andrew have branched out from graveyards and are wandering the trails at the park where Neil first saw Aaron. Kevin is there, too, but he is not happy about it. 

Neil has just killed two demons in a row, while Andrew took out a third and Kevin stood on the path and watched with his arms crossed. When Neil came back -- wiping gooey yellow demon blood on his jeans -- Kevin said, “I have some notes.”

He’s still explaining the various ways Neil almost died when they walk around the corner and Matt’s truck is parked beside an empty, colorful playground. Neil jogs over to meet them as the doors open and all of his friends pile out. Matt goes to the back and starts handing out Exy racquets. 

“My dad’s credit card bought them,” he tells Neil. “The parking lot here is huge, so I thought we could play.” He looks over Neil’s shoulder, where Kevin and Andrew are standing at the edge of the playground. “They can play too.”

Andrew jumps up to sit on top of the monkey bars instead, but Kevin takes a racquet and tests the weight of it in his hand. “Riko loves Exy,” he says. “We used to play at The Nest all the time.” 

Neil thinks of his father enrolling him in Little League and can’t bring himself to be upset about the ulterior motives behind the one nice thing his father ever did for him. Exy was one of the few bright spots in his life while he and his mother were on the run. He hadn’t been allowed to play, but watching the games and reading the occasional magazine his mom had bought him had given him something to distract him from the constant fear and paranoia. It should be tainted by the fact that his father had only signed him up to please his future vampire master, but somehow it isn’t. That part is irrelevant.

They play in the parking lot for two hours. Kevin destroys them all single-handedly. Every so often, he stops to tell them how terrible they are. Somehow, Kevin has even more critiques for their Exy skills than he did for Neil’s demon slaying. After they’re done and all the racquets are back in Matt’s truck, Dan turns to Neil and says, “Can we do this again? We’re almost in the playoffs.”

Neil looks at Kevin, who shrugs like he’s doing them a favor. “I guess I can make time,” he says. 

Fair enough, Neil thinks. It’s not like those bottles of vodka will drink themselves.

\----

His friends come on patrol every night. Sometimes all of them, sometimes in groups of two or three. Kevin comes most nights and they play Exy in parking lots between killing demons. On the nights he doesn’t come, they wander around parks and cemeteries and talk. Andrew doesn’t say much, but he holds Neil’s hand and puts up with everything else.

On Day 17, they win their final district game. Andrew comes to the game, then takes Neil to Eden’s and lets Neil rub on him on the dance floor until he's desperate. Then Andrew works his hand into Neil’s jeans and gets him off right there in the middle of the crowd. 

On Day 13, Aaron and Katelyn come on patrol, only to vanish an hour in. Neil goes to look for them and walks around the back of a crumbling crypt to see Katelyn pinned against a wall, her legs wrapped around Aaron’s waist and Aaron’s fangs buried in her neck. He freezes, watching Katelyn’s head fall back and her back arch up into Aaron. She moans, soft, and he backs away as quietly as he can and flees to Andrew’s side. “They’re busy,” he says when Andrew looks at him. 

He’s so busy thinking about it, that when a demon comes leaping into the cemetery Neil can’t react in time and Andrew has to kill it for him. Luckily, it shies away when it gets too close to Neil and his magical amulet.

Later, when they leave, Katelyn puts her hand on Neil’s shoulder and whispers, “It might have been even hotter when I was human.”

Neil does not have a response. In bed that night, he slides down Andrew’s body and says, “Yes or no?”

Andrew says yes, so Neil takes Andrew in his mouth and tries not to choke. Andrew jerks him off afterwards, with human teeth digging in to the soft skin under Neil’s jaw. Neil comes so hard he sees stars. 

\----

On Day 10, Neil’s team travels to West Columbia for the first game of the playoffs. Neil knows the sun has set when he looks up during their warm up to see Andew and Kevin sitting at the top of the bleachers. Andrew is looking at Neil. Kevin is watching Wymack. 

They win by two points. As the stands empty, Dan pulls Wymack over to where Neil is standing with the vampires and introduces him to Kevin. “He’s kind of a dick,” she says cheerfully. “But he definitely helped us win. You have a lot in common.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Kevin says. Looking between them, Neil can see the resemblance in the shape of their eyes and the way they ball their hands up in their front pockets when they don’t know what to say. 

“This is Kevin Day,” Neil says. “His mother was a Watcher.”

Wymack frowns, studying Kevin. “Kayleigh,” he says. “I was sorry to hear about her death.

“Thank you,” Kevin says.

Wymack does not ask how Kevin ended up with fangs and Kevin doesn’t volunteer any more information. He just launches into a long list of mistakes that he thinks Wymack might want to have his team work on. 

It’s a start, Neil decides.


	17. Bite Me

At lunch on Day 8, Matt produces five tickets to a professional Exy game being played that night in Charlotte. “I thought maybe a couple of your friends would want to come,” he tells Neil. 

Neil almost says _you are my friends_ , when he realizes that Matt means the vampires. “I’ll ask them,” he says. 

“Ask Kevin,” Dan says. “We already know Andrew will go wherever you are.”

“Should I be jealous?” Matt asks. He grins at Dan, teasing. 

“Oh my god,” Dan says. She’s rolling her eyes, but still leaning into Matt’s side. “Kevin is terrifying. I just want to see what kind of complaints he can make against professional teams.”

“I’m sure he’ll find plenty,” Neil says dryly. 

Andrew insists on driving his own car, so Matt and Dan are waiting for them by the front doors when they get to the Charlotte stadium. Dan asks Kevin what he thinks about the teams and he immediately starts into an exhausting list of players and stats. Dan and Matt seem more than happy to engage with him, so Neil stops paying attention and takes everything in. 

The closest he’s ever come to a professional stadium is that night on the roof in Cincinnati. Neil holds Andrew’s hand and lets himself be led through the crowd. Around him, the soaring glass walls are draped with banners in Charlotte team colors. Some of them are announcing championship wins, others are printed with player’s faces and lists of accomplishments. If this is Matt’s attempt to distract Neil from his potential impending doom, it’s working. 

“I want to buy something,” Dan says, and drags them all over to the merch line. Kevin and Matt are still talking about the opposing team’s players and how they’ll stack up against Charlotte. 

When they get to the front of the line, Dan buys matching shirts for herself and Matt. Neil asks to see one of the team jerseys, and he must look happy about it because Andrew hands over his credit card and says, “You’re going to put that on right now, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Neil agrees, and pulls the jersey over his head. 

It turns out that Neil was correct, Kevin has possibly even more criticisms for these players than he does for Neil’s team. “I mean,” Kevin says, when Neil points this out. “They’re getting _paid_ to play like shit.”

Neil doesn’t think about the countdown at all until he wakes up the next morning to a text message that reads, “7”. Exactly a week left.

\----

On Day 6, Neil is sitting on the curb under a streetlight, watching Kevin get shot after shot past Renee, when Andrew drops down beside him. Seconds before, he’d been smoking on top of the gazebo on the other side of the parking lot. “How did you end up in Columbia?” Andrew asks.

Neil looks at him. They’ve mostly dropped the truth game since the countdown started, so Neil assumes this is another distraction. He shrugs. “I pointed at a map.”

“And your finger accidentally landed on a Hellmouth where a Watcher was already waiting for you?” Andrew looks skeptical. He has a point. 

“I never thought about it,” Neil says. “But you’re right. It was the second place I chose. The first time my finger landed on Jacksonville. It felt wrong, so I tried again.”

“Obviously,” Andrew says. “It was Jacksonville.” After a second, he adds, “Whatever’s coming, you’re supposed to be here to stop it.”

“Maybe,” Neil says. “Or I’m supposed to be here to die.”

“I already told you that a death wish is boring,” Andrew says mildly.

Neil frowns at him. “I don’t have a death wish,” he says. “I don’t want to die, but it would be better than letting Riko turn me into my father.”

“You could never be your father,” Andrew says. He wraps his hand around the back of Neil’s neck and pulls him in until their foreheads are pressed together. “I’ll kill you myself before I let that happen.”

Neil closes his eyes and breathes in Andrew’s scent. It helps calm the constantly increasing knot of anxiety in his stomach. “Are you going to turn me one day?” he asks, switching to German. He thinks he’s known the answer since the night Andrew told him about Katelyn. 

“Eventually,” Andrew says. “When you ask.”

Neil waits for the panic to kick in. He’s read about how vampires are turned. Andrew will have to feed Neil as much of his blood as Neil can swallow, then Neil has to die. Andrew’s blood will tie the universe's endless wellspring of death magic to his soul, and the next night he’ll wake up with fangs. He thinks about the dozen newly-risen vampires he’s staked in the last two months and doesn’t know what will make him better than them. What will make him less deserving of a quick second-death at the end of a stake. 

Then he looks at Andrew and realizes that’s the difference. The vampires he’s killed were turned by someone who walked away and left them to dig themselves out of their literal graves. Neil doesn’t have to ask to know that he’ll wake up in Andrew’s bed and no one will be able to touch him. 

He thinks about Andrew, waiting for Neil to ask to be bitten, to be turned. He’s giving Neil the chance to say no that Andrew never had, and Neil knows that he will say yes.

“Okay,” Neil says. “One day I’ll ask.”

Which is when a demon comes literally flying over the top of the gazebo and lands in the middle of their makeshift Exy court with a rush of air that stirs up a whirlwind of dead leaves around their legs. Above them, the sky turns a sickly grey color and thunder rolls in the distance. The demon spreads its leathery wings wide and turns on them with a snarl.

“The Hellmouth will not rest until the threats to its power have been burned away,” the demon intones. Behind the gazebo, lightning flashes. 

Andrew pulls a knife out from under his armband and throws it across the parking lot. The tip slices through the demon’s throat and the demon collapses to the asphalt with a heavy thump. The sky clears instantly and moonlight falls across the park.

“Good job,” Kevin sighs. “It fell on top of the ball.”

\----

On Day 5, Neil runs laps around a park track for three hours, until Andrew stops him and says, “Let’s go.”

“We’re patrolling.” Neil looks over to where Nicky is braiding Allison’s hair and Kevin is teaching Dan how to do a trick shot with her racquet. 

“Kevin won’t let them die,” Andrew says. “It would injure his pride.”

Allison looks up when Neil follows Andrew to the parking lot. Neil points at Andrew’s back and shrugs. “We’re leaving,” he says. 

She gives him a finger wave and says, “Be good.” Then holds her phone up over her head to show Nicky something on the screen.

When Neil gets to the car, Andrew holds out the keys. “You should drive,” he says. “It’ll give you something to pay attention to.”

Neil has never, not once, seen Andrew let anyone else drive his car. The only time he’s seen Andrew let anyone else drive at all was after they rescued Neil from Riko, when Nicky drove the rented SUV all the way back to Columbia.

Andrew drops the keys in Neil’s hand and says, “You do know how to drive, right?”

“Of course,” Neil says. “I have a license.”

Andrew raises an eyebrow. “That thing is fake.”

“Well, yes,” Neil concedes. “But I took the test in Texas when I was 14 and made a perfect score. The driving instructor said I was exemplary.”

That must be good enough, because Andrew walks around to the passenger side of the car and gets in the front seat. As Neil gets behind the wheel and pulls the door closed, Nicky calls out, “Wait, you never let _me_ drive!”

“Where are we going?” Neil asks, pulling out of the park and onto the empty suburban streets. It’s almost midnight on a weeknight, so the neighborhood is quiet around them. 

“Anywhere you want,” Andrew says. He taps at the console touchscreen a few times and soft music fills the car. It’s nothing Neil recognizes. He’s not even sure what language it’s in. 

Neil looks at the road and doesn’t think about anything except the steering wheel in his hands and the painted lines in front of him. At some point, the reassuring weight of Andrew’s hand slides onto his knee and stays there. 

Eventually, Neil yawns and Andrew has him pull over so they can switch. When Neils climbs into the passenger seat and looks at the console display, it’s a little after 2 AM. As always, Andrew has managed to recenter Neil’s emotions and keep him from spiraling into his own thoughts. Andrew drives them home while Neil rests his hand on Andrew’s thigh and falls asleep halfway there. 

When he leaves for school the next morning, Day 4, Andrew’s spare car key is resting on Neil’s keyring beside the only other key he’s ever been given: the one to the front door of Andrew’s house. He squeezes both keys in his hand and feels the metal ridges bite into his palm. He has a home now, he just has to stay alive to enjoy it.

\----

That night, after patrol, Andrew takes both of their shirts off and presses Neil down into the bed. Neil pulls his knee up to wrap around Andrew’s hip and keep him close while they move against each other. They make out until Neil can’t breathe, then Andrew seals his mouth over the pulse at the base of Neil’s neck and sucks. 

Neil tips his head back more, baring his throat. “Bite me,” he gasps, twisting his fingers into Andrew’s hair and keeping him in place. “I’m asking you to.” If he’s going to die in three days, he doesn’t want to miss anything he might regret in his last moments. 

Andrew growls, and the sound vibrates through his chest where they’re plastered against each other. Then there’s a double pinprick of fangs in Neil’s throat. Andrew said he would make it good, and Katelyn said it was good, and Neil believed them, mostly, but he still thought it would hurt. That there was no way it couldn’t hurt. Instead, Andrew sucks and Neil’s entire nervous system lights up, sending pleasure crashing up his spine as he digs his fingers into Andrew’s back and holds on. The rhythmic pull and release of Andrew’s mouth on his skin -- mixed with Neil’s sudden awareness of his own blood pumping through his veins -- feels so good that Neil can’t stop the rough, needy sounds falling helplessly from his lips 

“Andrew,” he says, pleading. It’s the only word he can form. “ _Andrew_.”

Andrew sucks one more time, hard, and Neil’s back bows up off the bed, grinding his hips against the hard line of Andrew’s cock. The tension under his skin releases and he comes with his entire body wrapped around Andrew, holding him close.

\----

The next day is Day 3. Andrew shuts down patrolling. “No reason to make yourself an easy target,” he says.

“Fine,” Neil says. “But the next round of playoffs is tomorrow and I’m not missing it.” Exy is another thing he isn’t willing to regret if he dies. If the last two things he does on this earth are kiss Andrew and play Exy, he thinks he’ll be able to make peace with everything else. 

Andrew’s eyes narrow but he nods. “Fine.”

Katelyn comes in with Aaron on her heels and sets a fast food bag down on the table in front of Neil. Neil opens the bag and pulls out a burger with an obscene amount of red meat on it. “Iron replacement,” Katelyn says, and winks at him. 

Kevin pushes through the kitchen door and goes to the freezer. He straightens up with a bottle of vodka in his hand and looks around the room in distaste. “What’s that smell?”

“Neil’s vitamins,” Katelyn chirps. She looks thrilled at the horrified face Kevin makes when he sees Neil’s food. 

“You’re going to have a fucking heart attack,” Kevin tells him. “Eating like that will kill you.

“It’s going to have to get in line,” Neil says, and takes a huge bite just to watch Kevin disapprove.

\----

Neil plays his heart out on Day 2. He spends the whole game aware of how it might be his last and tries to remember every detail, from the red of the goal to the buzz of the scoreboard to the _swoosh_ of the ball leaving his racquet. He makes the final goal, just before time runs out, and they win the game by a single point.

After the game, he brings Kevin over to talk to Wymack while the team changes in the locker rooms. The first thing Kevin says is, “I see you had Boyd fix his blind spot.” So Neil leaves them to it.

When Andrew pulls up to the house that night, there’s a long white box sitting on the front porch. Andrew parks in the garage and makes Neil stay in the kitchen while he goes to retrieve it. They open it on the table to reveal a dozen red roses with black thorns jutting out from their delicate green stems. The note on top says “Congratulations, Junior. See you soon.” There is no signature, just a lipstick print the same color as the flowers. 

Neil would recognize the color anywhere. His father’s right-hand woman, Lola, wore it every day. He remembers her standing across the room while his father killed the slayer, using the mirrored back of a surgical light to reapply the same vivid red. 

“It’s not Riko,” Neil says, reeling. He drops the card and watches it flutter down to the table. His chest feels hollow. “It’s my father. The countdown is from my father.”

He’d assumed -- foolishly, he now realizes -- that Riko’s claim on him superseded his father’s. That once any of the Moriyamas were in the picture, his father wouldn’t be allowed to come for him. That he would have to go through them for his chance at Neil. 

Neil looks at Andrew and says, with absolute certainty. “I’m going to die.”

“I’m not going to let you die,” Andrew counters. “As far as we know, your father is human. I have an extensive list of ways to kill humans only using the objects in this room. 

“I would hope so,” Neil says, clinging to the normalcy of their banter. “It’s a kitchen. There’s a whole block of knives a foot from your elbow.” He drops heavily into the bench beside the table and pushes the whole box onto the floor. It lands at Andrew’s feet and petals scatter across the dark hardwood. “Besides, he won’t be alone.”

“Okay,” Andrew says. He sits down across from Neil. “Tell me.”

Neil tells him about Lola and her brother Romero. How they caught Neil in the hallways of his house as a child and held him in place while his father “educated” him until he was weak from loss of blood.

“Lola used to talk a lot,” Neil says. “She liked to call me Junior and explain how all of the knives my father used on me were for different purposes. Different ways of inflicting pain. When my father wasn’t available, she had her brother hold me down and she did the educating herself. She didn’t leave as many scars behind, but she somehow made it hurt worse than he did.”

“Good to know,” Andrew says. “I’ll remember that when I kill her.” Neil is almost always able to read something in Andrew’s face these days, but he’s also realized that the completely blank slate he’s looking at now means that Andrew is too full of emotions to let any of them through.

“We’ll turn on the alarms,” Neil says. There’s a keypad by each of the doors and he’s seen cameras in the outside eaves of the house, but he doesn’t even know if they’re hooked up to anything. Vampires, it turns out, are way too confident to make home security a priority. “I won’t leave the house until this is over.”

Or, more likely, until he doesn’t have a choice. 

Before he pulls Andrew upstairs and tries to keep the rest of the world at bay with hot, handsy kisses and the slide of skin on skin, Neil sends one more text to Kevin. 

“Either you tell Wymack tomorrow night, or I will.”

\----

On Day 1, Kevin leaves right after sunset and doesn’t come back for hours. When he does, he takes two bottles out of the freezer and goes upstairs. “He told Wymack,” Neil says to Andrew. He can’t tell from Kevin’s reaction if it went well. Two bottles could be a celebration or a numbing agent.

Neil wakes up on Day 0 consumed with dread. He tucks his phone in his pocket, but can’t bring himself to look at the screen, where the message ending the countdown is waiting for him. 

The vampires are still asleep. His friends are at school, or home, or anywhere else safe. So Neil goes downstairs and sits on the couch and tries to figure out a way to stay alive. He meant it when he told Andrew that he doesn’t have a death wish. Before he came to Columbia, he would have been happy to have died right beside his mother. Now, though. Now he has friends and Exy and a weird vampire family and, most importantly, he has Andrew. He doesn’t want his life to end, not like this. If he’s going to die, he wants it to be on his own terms, with Andrew’s blood in his veins. 

His dedication to living holds firm until there’s a knock on the door and Neil checks the -- newly reconnected -- camera on his phone to see his father, in the flesh, looking back at him.


	18. Nathaniel

“Nathaniel,” his father calls through the door. His familiar voice gives Neil cold chills. “You have two choices: you can come with me quietly, or I’ll light the house on fire and you can watch your useless friends die.” On the camera, Nathan holds up a gas can and gives it a cheerful shake. 

Neil takes a deep breath, which does nothing to alleviate the churning in his gut. He takes off his necklace from Bee and lays it on the coffee table next to his key ring. It won’t do him any good against his human father. He almost leaves his phone, too, but remembers Andrew showing him the little Neil dot on his tracking app and leaves it in his pocket instead. He doesn’t know how long he’ll be allowed to keep it, but at least it gives him a chance of being found. 

Then he goes to the front door and walks outside.

\----

Nathan leaves the gas can sitting on the front porch and wraps his fingers around Neil’s elbow. “You’re much more obedient than you were as a child. Do I have the vampire to thank for that?”

Neil wants to say _fuck you_ , but his vocal cords are frozen. He doesn’t fight as he’s led to a waiting black limo and unceremoniously shoved inside. Nathan waits until Neil has managed to scramble to the other end of the car, then climbs in himself and knocks twice on the roof. The car pulls smoothly away from the curb, and Neil watches Andrew’s house disappear behind him. 

They don’t drive for very long before Nathan says, “I thought you were dead. When there was no sign of you after the unfortunate incident with your mother, I assumed you were incapable of surviving on your own. Which was a disappointment.”

Neil looks out the window, anything to not have to look at his father’s face and see himself reflected there. They aren’t driving towards the freeway, like Neil expected. Instead, they’re driving through Columbia, turning down one residential street after another. 

“Imagine my surprise,” Nathan continues. “When I received a call from Riko requesting that I retrieve my wayward son and hand him over the way I was intended to do when you were a child.” 

Of course, Neil thinks. He was right about Nathan having to go through the Moriyamas to get to him, he just hadn’t realized the Moriyamas would go to his father for help. Suddenly, he would give anything to hear Andrew call him an idiot. 

“The countdown was Lola’s idea.” Nathan sounds fond. It makes Neil want to vomit. “Riko needed some time and she’s always liked her little games. She used to love to play hide and seek with you when you were young.”

As if Neil could forget. He hid, she found him, then she took him to his father to be educated. Neil doesn’t remember it being a game, he just remembers being small and scared. 

They pass a familiar church, then turn in between a pair of curved, wrought-iron gates that Neil would recognize anywhere. Three weeks ago he’d been in Andrew’s car under the shadow of those same gates, with Andrew’s mouth on his throat and his hands wandering underneath Neil’s clothes. Now, he’s being dragged out of another car by his father and shoved to his knees on the gravel outside the gate. His father zip ties his wrists together in front of his body so tightly that Neil can immediately feel the edge of the plastic start to cut into his skin. Then he’s hauled to his feet, past the gates, and down the cracked cement path winding through the ancient graves. 

They can’t be more than ten miles from Andrew’s house. Neil watches the mid-afternoon sun as it crawls closer to the western horizon and hopes for the best. If Andrew can get to him before he’s handed over to Riko, he might have a chance. 

His father pulls him through the cemetery to the doors of a crumbling crypt. It’s the same place Neil caught Aaron and Katelyn. “What are we doing here?” he asks. He has to try twice, and his voice still comes out weak. 

Nathan pulls at the handle of the crypt’s lopsided wooden door and it opens with a grating sound that sets Neil’s teeth on edge. “This is the oldest crypt in Columbia,” his father says. “The Hellmouth is the most powerful here.”

Neil can’t imagine what his father wants with the power of the Hellmouth. His father is human. Lola must not be, Neil realizes. He tries to remember if he ever saw her during the day, but all he can recall is the blackness of the house as he tried to hide from the clicking of Lola’s stiletto heels while his father locked his mother in her bedroom. Her hands were frigid every time they touched him. The same temperature as the steel of the blades she used. 

That still doesn’t explain the Hellmouth, though. As far as he knows, it uses its power to defend itself from threats. She should be afraid of demons raining down on her, not trying to get as close to the center as possible. Neil thinks about Bee’s comment about most Watchers not knowing how Hellmouths work and hopes that Lola doesn’t understand, either. He needs any advantage he can get.

Nathan pulls Neil into the crypt and shuts the door behind them, leaving them in dusty half light. The air is thick with the stale scent of ancient decay, it fills Neil’s nostrils and sticks to the back of his throat. Nathan checks Neil’s pockets and drops his phone on the floor, then crushes it underneath the heel of his Italian leather shoe. Neil imagines the little dot with his name on it blipping out of existence on Andrew’s screen. 

“We have a few hours before the sun sets,” Nathan says. He pushes Neil to his knees again in the corner of the crypt, the uneven stone floor is rough through the thin material of his sweatpants. “Let me tell you a story.”

His father talks as the light grows dimmer inside the crypt and Neil tries to think about anything else. There is nothing distracting enough to drown out the sound of his father’s voice as he describes every single one of the almost two dozen slayers he’s hunted, captured, and killed. 

“Some of them don’t fight back,” his father is saying as the last of the natural light fades between the cracks in the stone walls and the yellow glow of the cemetery’s street lamps replaces it. “Those die quickly. The ones who struggle and scream, those are the ones you take your time with. Which one would you be, Nathaniel? It’s a pity I’ll never find out.”

“”No one said we can’t have _any_ fun,” a woman says. Neil looks over to see the door swinging open and Riko striding in with Lola hanging off his arm. She’s holding a pink toolbox in one hand.

“Darling,” Lola coos, sickeningly sweet, and comes to crouch in front of Neil, perching over her pencil thin four-inch heels. “Junior, darling, I’m so pleased to see that you’re alive. We were terribly worried.”

She jerks Neil’s head back by his hair and leans in. Neil feels the cold slide of her tongue as she licks a line up his neck. His stomach rolls. “Well, well,” Lola says. She stands again, keeping Neil’s hair wrapped around her fingers. “Our little Junior has been letting a vampire feed off of him.”

Riko’s face goes dark and he pulls the door closed behind him with a screech. As it shuts, Neil sees a dozen vampires in Riko’s red and black fanning out in front of the crypt. “You know,” Neil says, meeting Riko’s furious gaze. “Someday you might want to try red pants with black shirts. Spice it up a little.”

Riko snarls and motions at Lola, who yanks Neil to his feet by the hair. “No matter,” Lola says soothingly. She sets her toolbox on top of the stone coffin built up from the center of the room. “He will be bound to you by the time we’re done here.”

“Yes,” Riko says. His arrogant expression falls seamlessly back into place. “Of course.” He opens the door and calls out, “Bring him in.”

A moment later, three men file in the door. The first one, Neil doesn’t recognize. He’s holding a book in his hands that reminds Neil of the one Bee used to create the amulets. The next man is Lola’s brother, Romero. He’s pushing Jean in front of him. Jean looks like he hasn’t been fed since Neil left The Nest. His skin is so gray it looks halfway to ash already. His face is gaunt, cheekbones jutting out painfully. His red t-shirt is hanging loosely on his thin frame as he stumbles into the crypt.

Neil recognizes the third man, too, he’s another of Nathan’s men, Jackson. Jackson takes Neil from Lola and throws him on top of the thick stone plank covering the coffin. Neil’s skull bounces against the hard stone and his ears ring as Jackson zip ties his ankles together. With her hands free, Lola goes to drape herself over Nathan’s shoulder. “Just think, my love,” she purrs. “Soon this will be done and we’ll begin our eternal life together.”

“If this works,” Riko says. “If it doesn’t, then The Butcher will remain in my service indefinitely.”

“With all due respect, my King,” Nathan says, inclining his head in a brief display of deference. “I am in the service of your sire.”

“Did you not hear?” Riko raises a hand and the man standing with Jackson and Romero crosses to stand at Riko’s side. “You’ve met my warlock, he will be helping us with tonight’s ritual. He’s also been of great assistance over the last month, as I traveled to Japan to visit with my sire. Unfortunately, Kengo did not survive our social engagement. His coven was more than willing to welcome me as the new head of the Moryiama vampires.”

Nathan drops to one knee in front of Riko, effectively hiding the shock on his face. “My Lord,” he says

“I will remain your Lord until Nathaniel is bound to me,” Riko says. “You may stand.”

Nathan gets to his feet and steps back, waving Romero forward with Jean. Jackson efficiently binds Jean’s wrists and feet, then tosses him on top of the stone plank next to Neil. Jean lies limply, but his eyes flick over to meet Neil’s. 

“What are you going to do?” Neil asks. The more time he can buy, the better chance he has of being rescued. Andrew will have seen his necklace and keys by now and checked the security tapes. Which means he knows that Nathan has Neil. Neil didn’t think that would be enough when he assumed that he’d be taken as far away as possible, but he’s still in Columbia, and that means there’s still a tenuous thread of hope. 

Lola smiles at him. There is nothing friendly about it. “We’re going to use the power of the Hellmouth to bind you to your Lord,” she says, giving Riko a brief, elegant incline of her head. “Once you’re bound, you will have no choice but to do as he says.” She glances at Jean and makes a face of distaste. “This one is merely a sacrifice. The spell requires more blood than we can ask our Lord to spill. Once the sacrifice is dead, the claim will be complete.”

“And you will be mine,” Riko says. “Let the ritual begin.”

\----

Setting up for the ritual is quick. The warlock produces a bundle of herbs and lights the end on fire. Cloying smoke fills the small crypt until Nathan moves to stand by the partly open door and Neil can’t hold off a coughing fit.

“Cleansing,” the warlock says to Nathan, apologetically. “Old magic might interfere.”

When the herbs burn down and the smoke clears, Lola opens her toolbox and pulls out two curved daggers, with rubies set into their golden handles. “They seemed ceremonial,” she shrugs, and hands one to the warlock. 

The warlock turns the dagger over his in his hands and gives Lola an appreciative nod. “These will do nicely,” he says. 

The warlock pulls Jean’s bound hands into the air and places a silver bowl underneath them. Then he uses the dagger to open a cut down the inside of Jean’s forearm. The skin tries to knit back together, but the warlock opens the cut again immediately. Blood drips down Jean's arm and off his elbow, pinging down into the empty bowl. 

Neil’s arms are also yanked to one side and he looks up to see Lola holding her dagger above his skin. “This might take awhile,” she says, and presses the tip of the blade to Neil’s wrist. 

She cuts him over and over, keeping the same cut open and bleeding. His body heals itself slower each time. It doesn’t take long before Neil’s whole arm feels like it’s on fire, but he digs his teeth into his lower lip and doesn’t give her the satisfaction of hearing him scream. Beside him, Jean’s eyes are growing increasingly vacant.

“Your turn, my Lord,” Lola says. She steps aside and Riko comes forward, shedding his black suit jacket and rolling up the sleeve of his deep burgundy shirt. Lola removes the knife from Neil’s arm and licks one side of it clean, her teeth sharp and white beside the blood-smeared steel.

She offers the other side to Riko, but he declines with a slight shake of his head. “Slayer blood has never been to my taste,” he says.

Lola sets the knife aside. “I’ll save it for when you’re turned, my love,” she tells Nathan. 

She removes another blade from her toolkit. This time a gleaming silver scalpel. Riko holds his hand out and she cuts a neat line through his palm. He makes a fist, squeezing to keep the wound open, and his blood drips into the bowl with Neil’s. 

The warlock has stopped cutting Jean’s arm open, and is reciting in Latin from the book in front of him. As he gets further into the spell, there’s suddenly a sharp, painful tugging at the base of Neil’s spine, like a shard of his soul is being peeled off and cast out of his body. He hisses in pain and tries to roll away from Lola, fighting to sever the building bond. He can feel Riko at the other end of it like a writhing mass of darkness against Neil’s senses. 

“Naughty boy,” Lola says, and yanks Neil back into place. 

Just then, everything comes to a sudden halt as the decrepit wooden door is ripped off of the crypt and flung to one side. This time, the furious blond vampire that comes striding through the doorway is _definitely_ Andrew. Neil’s chest constricts in relief. 

“You’re touching my things again,” Andrew says to Riko. “Didn’t we _just_ talk about this?”


	19. Home

“You’re too late,” Riko says. He gives Andrew a cold, victorious sneer and motions at the warlock, who reaches for the bowl of Jean’s blood. He hands it to Riko and continues chanting in Latin, amping up his speed and volume. 

Jackson and Romero leap at Andrew in unison, and Neil can’t see what happens next, but he can hear the growling and snarling as Andrew fights them off. From the corner of his eye, he catches a blur of motion outside that resolves itself into Aaron turning one of Riko’s vampires to dust. Behind him are far more than the dozen or so vampires Neil saw earlier. Murdering Kengo must not have taken a whole month, since Riko obviously had time to turn every poor, doomed human he could get his hands on. He wonders, suddenly, if Riko makes them claw their way out of the ground. 

Riko tips the bowl and Jean’s blood starts to pour out, flowing over Riko’s hand and Neil’s arm. A hazy, ethereal glow starts to fill the crypt as blood mixes together and the warlock keeps chanting. The pain sparks up Neil’s spine and feels like it’s tunnelling into the back of his skull, reaching for his brain. The black, icy tendrils at the other end of the bond are pulling at Neil as the pain intensifies and his entire body feels like it’s being split apart at a level he can’t even comprehend. He finally screams. 

As Neil’s vision starts to fade out around the edges, there’s a burst of commotion on the other side of the crypt and Lola cries out. Her hands disappear and Neil looks around the room, fighting through the pain still threatening to drag him under. The chanting has stopped and Jackson and Romero are gone -- dust, Neil assumes. Andrew is standing beside the stone coffin. He has Riko on his knees with a wooden knife against his throat. 

He catches Neil’s gaze and their eyes lock as Andrew flips the knife around in a heartbeat and drives it directly into Riko’s chest. He turns to ash instantly in Andrew’s grasp.

With Riko dead, the pain starts to fade quickly and Neil sits up. He feels like he’s moving through syrup, but manages to swing his legs over the side of the coffin. Andrew cuts the ties around his ankles, then his wrists. Neil rubs his hands over the raw, chafed skin and tries to get his bearings.

The warlock is lying dead at the foot of the coffin, his head twisted at an unnatural angle. Beside Neil, Jean isn’t dead yet, but he’s still bleeding and he looks like a corpse. Neil isn’t sure how much longer he’s going to make it.

Neil hears another snarl of rage and turns around to see Lola pinning Kevin against a wall. There are still-healing gashes across her face from where he’s fighting back, but she’s older than him and has the added benefit of being insane. Nathan is backed into a corner beside them, unable to get around Lola without going directly past Andrew. 

Andrew throws the knife in a blur, but Lola drags Kevin out of the way and the blade clatters uselessly to the floor. Lola backhands Kevin -- hard enough to knock his hands free from where he’s trying to push her away -- and goes for his throat.

Before Andrew can move again, a deafening blast echoes through the crypt, making Neil’s brain rattle against the inside of his skull. Lola is thrown backwards and hits the wall hard enough to collapse a section of the ancient stone in a cascade of white dust. Wymack is standing in the doorway, clutching a shotgun. 

“Gift from the Watcher's Council,” he says. “Wooden pellets.”

“Thanks,” Kevin says. Coming from him, it’s practically a Father’s Day card. Neil thinks that if he’d been the one with the gun, Kevin would be giving him a list of criticisms right now. 

“Heartwarming,” Andrew says. He looks at where Nathan is still backed into a corner, trapped between Andrew and Kevin. “Let’s kill them both and go.” 

“She’s gone,” Kevin says. He looks at Wymack. “Next time ask the Council for a better gun.” Clearly the bonding moment is over. 

Nathan tries to scramble for the opening Lola’s body left in the wall, but Kevin stops him in a blink. He holds Neil’s father against the wall by his throat and looks at Andrew. “What do you want me to do with him?”

“Not my choice,” Andrew says. He wraps an arm around Neil’s waist and pulls him off the coffin. Neil leans into him gratefully, taking in the familiar press of Andrew’s fingers against his ribs and the way Andrew feels like warmth and home. 

“He can’t do it,” Nathan says. Any fear he might be feeling is hidden behind the arrogant bite in his voice. “He can’t do anything without the help of vampires. It’s pathetic.” 

The disappointed twist of his face when he says it makes Neil feel like a scared child. He isn’t, though. He isn’t a child and he isn’t scared. He takes a step closer and Andrew supports him as he staggers across the crypt to get in his father’s space. Kevin steps to the side but stays poised to move back in.

“You were supposed to be my legacy,” Nathan hisses. He looks directly at Neil and there’s nothing in his face except for burning hatred.

Neil holds a hand out to Andrew, who slides a thin steel knife out from under one of his armbands and presses the handle into Neil’s palm. Neil takes a step away from Andrew’s side and looks straight into the mirror image of his own blue eyes. 

In one smooth motion, he reaches up and drives the blade through the underside of his father’s jaw.

Nathan slumps to the ground. Blood drips out of his nose and leaks from the corners of his mouth. He makes a few wet, gasping noises and goes still. The last hardened lump of dread in Neil’s chest breaks apart and he’s suddenly tired all the way to his bones.

Neil stumbles back and turns his face into Andrew’s neck. “I would really like to go home now,” he says. He’s weak and dizzy from blood loss, even as the flayed skin on his arm is scabbing over. If Andrew wasn’t holding him up, he wouldn’t be able to stand at all. 

As Andrew starts to guide him towards the door, Neil looks at Kevin. “Bring Jean. We can’t leave him here.”

Kevin hesitates for a beat, then reaches out and scoops Jean up off the stone plank. He’s limp in Kevin’s arms, but he doesn’t disintegrate, so Neil has some hope. 

When they get outside, Nicky and Katelyn are sitting on the ground, surrounded by a small herd of hellhounds. Neil starts to push off of Andrew’s shoulder in alarm, but then one of the hounds licks Katelyn’s cheek and she giggles. Aaron is standing a few feet away, looking deeply unimpressed. 

“Neil!” Nicky shouts, making Neil wince. His head is still throbbing from Riko’s spell and Wymack’s shotgun. Nicky gets to his feet and rushes over, a hellhound bouncing on his heels. He reaches out like he’s going to hug Neil, but Andrew bares his teeth and Nicky steps back. Instead, he does an excited double hand wave in front of his body and says, “You’re alive!”

Aaron gives Neil a brief nod acknowledging his continued existence and gestures at the hounds. “The Hellmouth sent help,” he says. “They killed a bunch of Riko’s minions and now they seem to want a reward.”

“They like us,” Katelyn says. The rest of the hellhounds trail after her when she comes over to give Neil a gentle pat on the shoulder. Andrew growls softly. Katelyn, as usual, ignores it. 

“No,” Andrew says. He jerks his head at Kevin and Jean. “We’re already bringing one stray home today.”

\----

The hellhounds follow them back to the house and don’t go away until Katelyn takes some of Neil’s leftover Chinese food outside and feeds it to them. “They seemed to like beef and broccoli,” she says when she comes back inside. “Are you sure we can’t keep one?”

Aaron sighs. “I love you,” he tells her. “But I will leave you.”

Neil is sitting on the kitchen table, letting Andrew carefully bandage his forearm. The wound from Lola’s dagger is scabbing over and closing, but it’s slow. When Andrew is satisfied, he helps Neil off the table and takes him into the living room. Jean is on the couch with Nicky kneeling beside him, holding a dripping blood bag over his mouth. He already looks a little healthier.

Neil looks around the room, Kevin is nowhere to be seen.

Bee and Wymack are standing in front of the television, talking quietly. There’s a map spread across the coffee table at their side with Neil’s necklace wrapped around a compass next to it. There’s a neatly burned out circle on the map. Neil assumes that’s where the crypt is.

“A locator spell?” Neil asks, looking back at Bee and Wymack. 

“Leaving your amulet behind made tracing you easy,” Bee says. She gives him a warm smile and goes to disentangle his necklace from the compass and hand it to him. “I’m glad you’re home safely.” 

Andrew takes Neil upstairs and strips them both in the bathroom, then helps Neil into a spray of hot water and cleans the blood and dust off his skin and hair, carefully avoiding the bandage on his arm. By the time he dries Neil off and redresses him in soft pajamas, Neil is barely awake. Andrew tucks him into bed and crawls in next to him. Neil passes out as soon as the comforting weight of Andrew’s arm settles over his hip.

\----

When Neil wakes up, Andrew is sitting beside him, reading a book. The lamp on the nightstand is on, and there’s a slice of fading twilight streaming in around the edge of the blackout curtains in the window.

“What time is it?” Neil asks. He pushes up to sit beside Andrew and rest his head against Andrew’s shoulder. 

“Around seven,” Andrew says. He closes his book and reaches up to card his hand through Neil’s hair. Neil closes his eyes and leans into it, letting the sheer relief wash over him. He was so sure he would be dead, or enslaved at Riko’s hand, but somehow he survived. Somehow he got to come home and sleep in Andrew’s bed and feel Andrew’s hands on him again. 

Neil’s stomach growls, loudly, and Andrew huffs out a brief laugh. “Humans,” he says.

Downstairs, Nicky, Aaron, and Katelyn are sitting on the couch. Katelyn and Nicky both jump up when Neil and Andrew get to the bottom of the staircase. Aaron doesn’t get up, but he does mute the television speakers.

“I got you food,” Katelyn says, and blurs towards the kitchen. Nicky clears a few pillows and some of Kevin’s magazine off one end of the couch and hovers while Neil sits down. 

“I’m fine,” Neil says. “I promise.” He means it. His arm still aches, and he feels weak, but other than that he really is fine. 

Nicky looks like he might argue, so Neil says, “Is Jean okay?”

“Oh.” Nicky changes tracks instantly. “He’s in Kevin’s room. He’s better, I think. He was swallowing blood and he looks slightly less like he’s going to dissolve at any second.”

“Where’s Kevin?” Andrew asks sharply. Neil looks up at him to see Andrew glaring at Nicky suspiciously. 

Nicky sighs. “He went with the Watcher,” he says. “He promised that he’d come back. I don’t know, I think he just needed some time.”

“He’s a dumbass,” Andrew says. He doesn’t sound angry, just resigned. 

“It’s too bad he’s not here,” Katelyn says as she comes back into the room carrying two huge pizza boxes. “He would hate the amount of pepperoni I had put on these.”

The pizza is lukewarm, but Neil inhales an entire box before he slows down. When he looks up, Nicky takes a picture of him. “For Allison,” he says. “She won’t stop demanding proof of life.”

\----

The next night, Andrew takes Neil to the gym where his friends are waiting.

“It’s like a post-kidnapping ritual,” Neil says. 

“Next time someone else can drive you,” Andrew says. “I’m not saving your ass again.”

Neil reaches for his hand. “Sure,” he says, and smiles when Andrew tangles their fingers together. 

Kevin and Wymack are standing just inside the doors. Andrew looks at Kevin, who nods once and walks away, towards Wymack’s office. Andrew turns to Neil and says, “Don’t leave this building.” Then he follows Kevin. 

“How’s it going?” Neil asks Wymack, who shrugs. 

“Weird as hell,” he says. “But getting better.”

On the court, Neil’s friends are already sitting in a circle on the C at center court. Neil takes his place between Matt and Allison, who both immediately throw their arms around him. Dan crawls across the circle and joins the hug. Renee stays where she is, but reaches between Allison and Dan to put a hand on Neil’s arm. Neil lets them cling to him for as long as they want, even as he’s slowly crushed against Matt’s chest. Eventually, Dan realizes Neil might be having trouble breathing and they all let go. Matt’s eyes look suspiciously damp. 

Neil almost says _I’m fine_ , but instead he says, “It wasn’t as bad as last time.” He means it to be reassuring, but the looks on their faces do not reflect his intent. 

“Holy shit,” Allison says, incredulous. “Do we need to make a 1-10 scale to rate how badly Neil has been _tortured_.”

“Start it at five” Renee says. “I’m not sure he’d even register anything below that.”

“I wouldn’t say tortured.” Neil holds out his arm, where the bandage is gone and the skin on his forearm is pink and new. “She literally only cut me in one place.”

“See?” Renee says, but she gives Neil a teasing smile.

Neil tells them everything that happened in the cemetery. When he gets to Wymack and his shotgun, he realizes that they don’t know about Kevin. It’s not his story to tell, he decides, and moves on. Finally, he gets to Nicky and Katelyn and the hellhounds. 

“We’re going to make a movie about your life,” Allison says. “And we’re going to make millions.”

“Now we have to win the playoffs,” Dan says. “It’ll make a great ending to the movie.”

\----

When Neil and Andrew get home, Neil locks the bedroom door behind them and tucks his fingers into the front pockets of Andrew’s jeans. “Touch me?” he asks. It’s only been two nights, but he feels like he hasn’t kissed Andrew in years.

Andrew gives him a long, critical look -- during which Neil tries to look as healthy and alert as possible -- then leans in and kisses Neil like he’s the only water for miles in the middle of a drought. “You’re the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” he says, when they have to stop so Neil can breathe. 

“I don’t believe you,” Neil says. He winds his arms up around Andrew’s neck and kisses him with everything he has.

They kiss desperately through taking off each other’s clothes and stumbling towards the bed, until Neil arches his neck against the pillows and shows Andrew his throat. “Yes or no?” he pants. 

“Yes,” Andrew says. The possessive edge to his voice sets off a spark of heat under Neil’s skin. He lifts his hips up, searching for the right angle of contact against Andrew’s body. 

Andrew braces with one forearm on the bed beside Neil’s head and works his other hand between them. He takes both of them in hand and Neil babbles “ _yes_ ” and " _Andrew_ " and " _bite me_ " until finally Andrew’s fangs sink into his skin. Neil clings to Andrew’s shoulders and lets his senses be overwhelmed. 

Afterwards, Neil buries his face in Andrew’s neck and breathes in the scent of copper and smoke. He doesn’t know what’s coming next, but for the first time in years, he feels like he might actually get to live long enough to find out.


	20. Epilogue

**One Week Later:**

As Andrew turns onto their street, Neil is still vibrating with adrenaline from another playoff win. He has a hand on Andrew’s knee, so he slides his fingers around until he can feel the inseam of Andrew’s jeans. Andrew glances at him, but Neil just blinks innocently and starts trailing his fingertips up the inside of Andrew’s thigh.

“Shit," Andrew says. It doesn’t sound like a _wow, this is so hot_ kind of swear, though, so Neil looks up and follows Andrew’s gaze through the windshield to the front of the house. There’s a black limo parked outside. The only other car like that Neil has seen recently had his father in it. Panic freezes his blood for an instant before he remembers the crypt and the knife and his father dying at his feet.

As they pull into the driveway, a uniformed driver gets out of the front of the limo and opens a back door in a clear signal for Andrew and Neil to get inside. 

“Moriyamas,” Andrew tells Neil.

Neil looks at him in disbelief. “Again?”

When they climb into the back of the limo -- Andrew first -- there’s an elegant, well-dressed Japanese man waiting for them. “Ah, the slayer,” the man says to Neil when his driver shuts the door behind them. “You’re very impressive.”

“Ichirou, I assume,” Andrew cuts in. “How can we help you?”

Another of Kengo’s offspring, Neil remembers. Older than Riko. Kevin hadn’t said much more about Ichirou. Neil got the feeling that he and Riko had very little to do with each other. He has no idea how Andrew knew it was him, but Neil is learning that part of what makes Andrew so dangerous is how quickly his brain works. 

“I’m actually here to see you,” Ichirou says serenely. He’s the calmest Moriyama vampire Neil has met. “I’m not sure if you’re aware, but killing Riko technically puts you in charge of the Moriyama coven.”

Neil looks at Andrew, surprised, but Andrew doesn’t react. 

“I was aware, actually,” he says. Andrew leans back against the seat in a casual sprawl that Neil recognizes as way too practiced for Andrew to be as unconcerned as he’s acting. 

Ichirou pulls a folded sheet of thick parchment paper out of the inside pocket of his jacket and passes it over to Andrew. “I’ve taken the liberty of drawing up a blood oath contract passing the coven to me. It should have come to me in the first place, as Kengo’s oldest offspring, but Riko interfered. The other option, of course, is that I kill you and take the power on my own.”

Andrew says nothing as he unfolds the oath and reads over it. He technically has the upper hand here, but Neil doesn’t think either of them would survive a fight with Ichirou. Kevin didn’t say how old Ichirou is, but -- even as still and relaxed as he appears right now -- the power rolling off of him is making the hair on Neil’s arms stand on end. 

Ichirou’s eyes flick to Neil. “You’ve aligned yourself strongly with the Columbia coven,” he says. “Unusual for a slayer.”

Neil shrugs. “I don’t see what that has to do with anything. It was either them or you, and they’ve only threatened to murder me. Not actually tried.”

“I don’t share my sire’s taste for spilling slayer blood,” Ichirou says. “Although, you would be an interesting addition to my coven.”

“I’ll sign this,” Andrew cuts in. “And you’ll leave us alone. All of us. If any of your people ever want to step foot on this Hellmouth again, you have to go through me. Or I'll kill them and mail you the ashes.”

“Understood,” Ichirou says. He produces a short dagger, but Andrew slides his own knife out of his arm band and cuts his palm with that instead. He presses his hand against the oath. When he removes it, Neil watches as the smear of blood is absorbed into the paper and Andrew’s name appears neatly in red at the bottom. Andrew passes the parchment to Ichirou, who cuts his hand with his dagger and holds it to the paper the same way Andrew did. Then he folds it back up and tucks it into his pocket. 

“It was a pleasure doing business with you,” Ichirou says to Andrew. On cue, the door next to Neil opens again and the driver gestures for them to exit the car. 

“It’s really over,” Neil says, when they’re standing on the sidewalk watching the limo’s tail lights disappear around the corner. Lola is still out there somewhere. If she wants to avenge his father’s death, they’ll deal with it. But Neil isn’t scared of her, not anymore.

“Yes,” Andrew agrees. “Which means I’m stuck with you.”

“You love it,” Neil says. 

Andrew shoots him a glare, but doesn’t disagree.

\----

**One Month Later:**

The Columbia High School Cubs win the state championship. They play on the court at Palmetto State and there’s a whole section of the stands reserved for his teammates’ cheering families. The vampires are there, too, at the top of the stands. Neil skips right over the family section and searches them out.

Nicky and Katelyn are both wearing blinding orange shirts with Neil’s name and number on the front in huge white letters. Kevin is wearing a Columbia High School Exy shirt that he must have gotten from Wymack. Andrew and Aaron are both dressed in black, but Andrew has a single band of orange elastic wrapped around one wrist. Neil waves at them and Nicky and Katelyn cheer, but it’s Andrew’s small nod that Neil is really looking for. 

They’re exhausted by the second half, covered in sweat and -- in Matt’s case -- a little bit of blood. But they win by three points in the last twenty minutes and Neil can’t even feel how tired he is under the exhilaration. 

He comes off the court and Nicky and Katelyn immediately throw themselves at him and both start talking at once. When Neil disentangles himself, Kevin gives him a nod. “Good game,” he says. Neil has a feeling he’s just holding in his notes until the next day. Still, it’s a nice gesture. 

Aaron fistbumps Neil and says, “Really, that was fucking awesome.” Then he rounds up his girlfriend and his cousin and herds them towards the doors.

Kevin has already wandered away to talk to Wymack. He stayed with Wymack for almost two weeks after Riko died, and when he came back he seemed a little more determined to do something with the rest of his eternal life other than spend it on Andrew’s couch. He’s started tagging along with Aaron and Nicky to Eden’s sometimes, and he goes to Wymack’s a couple of nights a week to watch games with Wymack and Jean -- who has replaced Kevin in Wymack’s guest room until they can figure out what to do with him. 

As they push through the stadium doors half an hour later, Matt is talking about throwing a party the next night and Dan and Allison are tossing out suggestions and guest lists. Neil isn’t hearing any of it. All he can think about is the score on the board at the end of the game. He’s still alive and he won an Exy championship. In a few months, he’ll graduate, which seems far less meaningful in the grand scheme of things. Even shitty Exy players usually get to graduate.

Behind the stadium, Andrew’s Maserati is parked not far from the bus. Andrew is sitting on the trunk, smoking. Even seeing him from this far away makes Neil’s stomach flutter. 

“Text me about the party,” Neil tells Matt. “I’ll bring, uh.” He looks at the underclassmen in front of them and waves a hand vaguely in Andrew’s direction. “Everyone.” 

“Fuck yes,” Matt throws his arm around Neil’s shoulder. “We’re going to tell our _children_ about this party.” He fucks up Neil’s hair, then pushes him towards the Maserati. “Your boy is waiting,” he says.

With a wave at Wymack, Neil splits off from his friends and jogs over to Andrew’s car. Andrew flicks the butt of his cigarette to the ground and spreads his knees so Neil can lean between them. 

“We’re going to a party tomorrow night,” Neil says. He puts his hands on Andrew’s thighs and nuzzles in closer to kiss Andrew’s neck. He knows his team can see them from the bus windows, he just doesn’t care. 

Andrew hums and Neil can feel the vibration against his lips. “Are we?” he says. His fingers thread through the sweat-damp hair at the back of Neil’s neck. 

Neil tips his head back and Andrew’s other hand slides around his hip, thumb slotting neatly over Neil’s hipbone. “We _won_ ,” Neil says, in case maybe Andrew missed it.

Even as the words leave his mouth, he can feel the giddiness bubbling up again. It must be reflected on his face, because Andrew’s eyes go momentarily soft and he pulls Neil in for a kiss that leaves Neil chasing after his mouth when he stops.

Wymack honks the horn as the bus pulls away behind him, so Neil turns in Andrew’s arms to wave at his friends. Matt hangs out one of the side windows and waves back until Dan’s hand appears and pulls him inside. 

When they’re gone, Neil pushes up and kisses Andrew again. “Take me home,” he mumbles into Andrew’s mouth. “I have a lot more energy to work off.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We have reached the end of this saga! Or at least it's felt like a saga in my head. All of the thanks I can possibly give to my BFF @likearecord, who is my constant source of validation and also really good at continuity editing. 
> 
> I can't tell you how much I appreciate everyone who has been reading along for the last 20 days. This is by _far_ the longest thing I've ever written and it's only the second thing I've written since I quarantine-read AFTG. When I started it, I wasn't sure how long it was going to be and I only had a vague plot. All of your comments really helped keep this thing on track and moving forward. So, again, thank you!!


End file.
